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Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 3 weeks ago
The art of persuasion consists as...

The art of persuasion consists as much in that of pleasing as in that of convincing, so much more are men governed by caprice than by reason!

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
When we know what words are...

When we know what words are worth, the amazing thing is that we try to say anything at all, and that we manage to do so. This requires, it is true, a supernatural nerve.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 1 day ago
Let this always be plain to...

Let this always be plain to thee, that this piece of land is like any other; and that all things here are the same with all things on the top of a mountain, or on the sea-shore, or wherever thou chooses to be. For thou wilt find just what Plato says, Dwelling within the walls of the city as in a shepherd's fold on a mountain.

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X, 23
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 weeks 5 days ago
Just as we suffer….

Just as we suffer from excess in all things, so we suffer from excess in literature; thus we learn our lessons, not for life, but for the lecture room.

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Line 12 Alternate translation: Not for life, but for school do we learn. (translator unknown) Alternate translation: We are taught for the schoolroom, not for life. (translator unknown).
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 2 weeks ago
Several actual worlds without one another...

Several actual worlds without one another are not, therefore, impossible by the very concept, as Wolf hastily concluded from the notion of a complex or multiplicity which he deemed sufficient to a whole, as such, but only on condition that there exist but one necessary cause of all things. If several are admitted, several worlds without one another will be possible in the strictest metaphysical sense.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 2 weeks ago
One should hasten to put such...

One should hasten to put such witches to death. Statement of 20 August 1538;

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as quoted in Conversations With Martin Luther (1915), translated and edited by Preserved Smith and Herbert Percival Gallinger, p. 163
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 6 days ago
The proletarian works with the instruments...

The proletarian works with the instruments of production of another, for the account of this other, in exchange for a part of the product. ... The proletarian liberates himself by abolishing competition, private property, and all class differences.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 1 week ago
As there were black swans, though...

As there were black swans, though civilized people had existed for three thousand years on the earth without meeting with them...The uniform experience, therefore, of the inhabitants of the known world, agreeing in a common result, without one known instance of deviation from that result, is not always sufficient to establish a general conclusion.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 1 week ago
Whatever we may think or affect...

Whatever we may think or affect to think of the present age, we cannot get out of it; we must suffer with its sufferings, and enjoy with its enjoyments; we must share in its lot, and, to be either useful or at ease, we must even partake its character.

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"The Spirit of the Age, I", Examiner (9 January 1831), p. 20 Full text online
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
Tout existant naît sans raison, se...

Tout existant naît sans raison, se prolonge par faiblesse et meurt par rencontre. Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 1 week ago
A testimony is sufficient when it...

A testimony is sufficient when it rests on: 1st. A great number of very sensible witnesses who agree in having seen well. 2d. Who are sane, bodily and mentally. 3d. Who are impartial and disinterested. 4th. Who unanimously agree. 5th. Who solemnly certify to the fact.

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As quoted by H. P. Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, p. 108, 1877
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
Justice was in all countries originally...

Justice was in all countries originally administered by the priesthood; nor indeed could laws in their first feeble state have either authority or sanction, so as to compel men to relinquish their natural independence, had they not appeared to come down to them enforced by beings of more than human power. The first openings of civility have been everywhere made by religion. Amongst the Romans, the custody and interpretation of the laws continued solely in the college of the pontiffs for above a century.

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An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757-c. 1763), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI (1856), p. 196
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 3 days ago
The foxes have holes, and the...

The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.

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8:20 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
4 months 2 weeks ago
There as here, passions are the...

There as here, passions are the motive of all action, but they are livelier, more ardent, or merely simpler and purer, thereby assuming a totally different character. All the first movements of nature are good and right.

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First Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 week 4 days ago
Every man should be protected in...

Every man should be protected in his lawful acts, and be certain that no ex post facto law shall punish or endamage him for them. ...The sentiment that ex post facto laws are against natural right, is so strong in the United States, that few, if any, of the State constitutions have failed to proscribe them. The federal constitution indeed interdicts them in criminal cases only; but they are equally unjust in civil as in criminal cases, and the omission of a caution which would have been right, does not justify the doing what is wrong. Nor ought it to be presumed that the legislature meant to use a phrase in an unjustifiable sense, if by rules of construction it can be ever strained to what is just.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 3 weeks ago
Underlying even the so-called problem of...

Underlying even the so-called problem of knowledge there is simply this human feeling, just as underlying the inquiry into the "why," the cause, there is simply the search for the "wherefore," the end. All the rest is either to deceive oneself or to wish to deceive others; and to wish to deceive others in order to deceive oneself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 week 4 days ago
It is in our lives, and...

It is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read. By the same test the world must judge me. But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested absurdities. My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest.

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Letter to Mrs. Harrison Smith
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
3 months 1 day ago
Antiquity believed that the forces of...

Antiquity believed that the forces of love in the universe were limited. Therefore they were to be used sparingly,and everyone was to be loved only according to his value.

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L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 94
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
3 weeks 4 days ago
He not only overflowed with learning...

He not only overflowed with learning but stood in the slops.

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On Macaulay; reported in Hesketh Pearson, The Smith of Smiths (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1934), p. 180
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 1 day ago
Learn to ask of all actions,...

Learn to ask of all actions, "Why are they doing that?" Starting with your own.

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(Hays translation) X, 37
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
2 months 4 weeks ago
Do you think that God will...

Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?

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No. 35. (Usbek writing to Gemchid)
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
1 month ago
[on Epicurus] His starting point is...

[on Epicurus] His starting point is a conviction that apathy is impossible, and that pleasure - though not necessarily sensual pleasure - is the only conceivable, and quite legitimate, end of life and action. "Nature leads every organism to prefer its own good to every other good" - even the stoic finds a subtle pleasure in renunciation. "We must not avoid pleasures, but we must select them". Epicurus, then, is no epicurean, he exalts the joys of intellect rather than those of sense; he warns against pleasures that excite and disturb the soul which they should rather quite and appease. In the end he proposes to seek not pleasure in its usual sense, but ataraxia - tranquility, equaninimity, repose of mind; all of which trembles on the verge of Zeno's "Apathy"

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 day ago
The meaning of relativity has...

The meaning of relativity has been widely misunderstood. Philosophers play with the word, like a child with a doll. Relativity, as I see it, merely denotes that certain physical and mechanical facts, which have been regarded as positive and permanent, are relative with regard to certain other facts in the sphere of physics and mechanics. It does not mean that everything in life is relative and that we have the right to turn the whole world mischievously topsy-turvy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
Political ideals must be based upon...

Political ideals must be based upon ideals for the individual life. The aim of politics should be to make the lives of individuals as good as possible.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 week ago
I am a pattern watcher.

I am a pattern watcher.

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(p. 311)
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 months 1 week ago
I am much more open about...

I am much more open about categories of gender, and my feminism has been about women's safety from violence, increased literacy, decreased poverty and more equality. I was never against the category of men. "As a Jew, I was taught it was ethically imperative to speak up" in Haaretz.

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24-Feb-10
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
3 weeks 1 day ago
For several years I have referred...

For several years I have referred to this, hitherto, rare and inaccessible work as the I-told-you-so-book, because it has often been implied that I have invented my explanations of Buddhism out of thin air, thus falsifying its authentic teachings... Yet, despite the occultist flavor of its title, The Secret Oral Teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist Sects is the most direct, no-nonsense, and down-to-earth explanation of Mahayana Buddhism which has thus far been written.

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Watts' Foreward to The Secret Oral Teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist Sects (1964)], by Alexandra David Neel
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 6 days ago
Plato and his....
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Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
4 months 2 weeks ago
The people resemble a wild beast,...

The people resemble a wild beast, which, naturally fierce and accustomed to live in the woods, has been brought up, as it were, in a prison and in servitude, and having by accident got its liberty, not being accustomed to search for its food, and not knowing where to conceal itself, easily becomes the prey of the first who seeks to incarcerate it again.

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Book 1, Ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
4 months 1 day ago
It is not that I am...

It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours.

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Stobaeus, iii. 3. 51
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 2 weeks ago
It appears, accordingly, from the experience...

It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves.

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Chapter VIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
1 month 2 days ago
Scientific revolutions are inaugurated by a...

Scientific revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense... that an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of nature to which that paradigm itself had previously led the way. p. 91

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2012 ed.
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 1 week ago
There is only one way to...

There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing and be nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
4 months 3 weeks ago
For no fact….

For no fact is so simple we believe it at first sight, And there is nothing that exists so great or marvellous That over time mankind does not admire it less and less.

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Book II, lines 1026-1029 (tr. Stallings)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 week 4 days ago
That one hundred and fifty lawyers...

That one hundred and fifty lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.

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On the U.S. Congress, in his Autobiography, 6 January 1821
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
2 months 3 weeks ago
To be in touch with senses...

To be in touch with senses and emotions beyond conquest is to enter the realm of the mysterious.

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Chapter 2, Altars of Sacrifice
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 week 4 days ago
I am NOT nothing! A vaporous...

I am NOT nothing! A vaporous phosphorescence on a damp meadow, a miserable worm that crawls and loves, that shouts and talks about wings for an hour or two until his mouth is blocked with earth. The dark powers give no other answer. But within me a deathless Cry, superior to me, continues to shout. For whether I want to or not, I am also, without doubt, a part of the visible and the invisible Universe. We are one.

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Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
4 months 2 weeks ago
That which is good…

That which is good for the enemy harms you, and that which is good for you harms the enemy.

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Rule 1 from Machiavelli's Lord Fabrizio Colonna: libro settimo (Book 7) (Modern Italian uses nemico instead of nimico.)
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
1 week 1 day ago
I don't know what the life...

I don't know what the life of a rascal is like since I have never been one, but that of an honest man is abominable. How few men are there whose passage on this stupid planet has been marked by really good and useful acts! I prostrate myself before the one of which one can say: pertransivit bene faciendo; the one who had been able to instruct, console, and relieve his fellows; the one who made great sacrifices for charity; these heroes of silent charity who hide themselves and expect nothing in this world. But what is the ordinary man? And how many are there in a thousand who can ask themselves without terror: what have I done in this world? In what way have I advanced the common good and what will remain of me of good or evil?

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Letter to chevalier de Saint-Réal, 21 December 1816, Œuvre critique, xiv, p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 1 week ago
The more rational statement is that...

The more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be. Without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colorless, destitute of emotional warmth.

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Ch. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 3 days ago
When capitalism is negated, social processes...

When capitalism is negated, social processes no longer stand under the rule of blind natural laws.

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P. 318
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
Woes and wonders of power, that...

Woes and wonders of power, that tonic hell, synthesis of poison and panacea.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 2 weeks ago
The universal propensity to believe in...

The universal propensity to believe in invisible, intelligent power, if not an original instinct, being at least a general attendant of human nature, may be considered as a kind of mark or stamp, which the divine workman has set upon his work; and nothing surely can more dignify mankind, than to be thus selected from all other parts of the creation, and to bear the image or impression of the universal Creator. But consult this image, as it appears in the popular religions of the world. How is the deity disfigured in our representations of him! What caprice, absurdity, and immorality are attributed to him! How much is he degraded even below the character, which we should naturally, in common life, ascribe to a man of sense and virtue!

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Part XV - General corollary
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 week ago
Society is undergoing a silent revolution,...

Society is undergoing a silent revolution, which must be submitted to, and which takes no more notice of the human existences it breaks down than an earthquake regards the houses it subverts. The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way. But can there be anything more puerile, more short-sighted, than the views of those Economists who believe in all earnest that this woeful transitory state means nothing but adapting society to the acquisitive propensities of capitalists, both landlords and money-lords?

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"Forced Emigration," New York Daily Tribune, 22 March 1853.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
As long as one believes in...

As long as one believes in philosophy, one is healthy; sickness begins when one starts to think.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
2 months 4 days ago
Conservatism is itself a modernism, and...

Conservatism is itself a modernism, and in this lies the secret of its success.

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"Eliot and Conservatism" (p. 194)
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 2 weeks ago
Those who have handled sciences have...

Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. Therefore from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never yet been made), much may be hoped.

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Aphorism 95
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months ago
There is the love of...

There is the love of knowing without the love of learning; the beclouding here leads to dissipation of mind.

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
4 months ago
Once a word….

Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.

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Book I, epistle xviii, line 71
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 3 weeks ago
To-day is the parent of to-morrow....

To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone.

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Philosophical Maxims
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