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Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 6 days ago
How can you know if you...

How can you know if you are in the truth? The criterion is simple enough: if others make a vacuum around you, there is not a doubt in the world that you are closer to the essential than they are.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
For nature beats in perfect tune,...

For nature beats in perfect tune, And rounds with rhyme her every rune, Whether she work in land or sea, Or hide underground her alchemy. Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.

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Wood-notes, no. II, st. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
3 days ago
Writers are greatly respected. The intelligent...

Writers are greatly respected. The intelligent public is wonderfully patient with them, continues to read them, and endures disappointment after disappointment, waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, social theory, and what it cannot hear from pure science. Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.

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Nobel Prize lecture
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 weeks 5 days ago
There is nothing that comes closer...

There is nothing that comes closer to true humility than the intelligence. It is impossible to feel pride in one's intelligence at the moment when one really and truly exercises it.

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As quoted in the Introduction (by Siân Miles) p. 35
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 1 week ago
Phenomena of the external sense are...

Phenomena of the external sense are examined and set forth in physics; those of the internal sense in empirical psychology. Pure mathematics considers space in geometry and time in pure mechanics. To these is to be added a certain concept, intellectual to be sure in itself, but whose becoming actual in the concrete requires the auxiliary notions of time and space in the successive addition and simultaneous juxtaposition of separate units, which is the concept of number treated in arithmetic.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
2 months 1 week ago
Pleasure is in itself a good;...

Pleasure is in itself a good; nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good: pain is in itself an evil; and, indeed, without exception, the only evil; or else the words good and evil have no meaning. And this is alike true of every sort of pain, and of every sort of pleasure.

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Ch. 10: Of Motives
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 1 week ago
Percepts and phenomena which precedes the...

Percepts and phenomena which precedes the logical use of the intellect is called appearance, while the reflex knowledge originating from several appearances compared by the intellect is called experience.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
2 months 1 week ago
First of all, no one knows...

First of all, no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like. Nor, again, does anyone know his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special features of psychology such as his aversion to risk or liability to optimism or pessimism. More than this, I assume that the parties do not know the particular circumstances of their own society. That is, they do not know its particular economic or political situation, or the level of civilization and culture it has been able to achieve. The persons in the original position have no information as to which generation they belong.

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p. 117
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 1 week ago
Since my earliest childhood a barb...

Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic - if it is pulled out I shall die.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 week ago
I don't believe in an afterlife,...

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
3 months 1 week ago
They do not know the penalty...

They do not know the penalty of unrighteousness, which is the thing they most ought to know. For it is not what they think it is scourgings and death, which they sometimes escape entirely when they have done wrong but a penalty which it is impossible to escape. Two patterns, my friend, are set up in the world, the divine, which is most blessed, and the godless, which is most wretched, and their silliness and extreme foolishness blind them to the fact that through their unrighteous acts they are made like the one and unlike the other. They therefore pay the penalty for this by living a life that conforms to the pattern they resemble.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 5 days ago
I am convinced...
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Main Content / General
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 3 days ago
And that servant, which knew his...

And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.

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Luke 12:47 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 weeks 2 days ago
There is no reason whatever to...

There is no reason whatever to assume that woman, in her climb to emancipation, has been, or will be, helped by the ballot.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
It makes a tremendous emotional and...

It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.

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Lecture II, "Circumscription of the Topic"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is the common wonder of...

It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million of faces there should be none alike.

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Section 2
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 weeks 2 days ago
I've always believed that a writer...

I've always believed that a writer has got to remain an outsider. If I was offered anything like the Nobel Prize for Literature, I'd find it an extremely difficult conflict because I'd be basically disinclined to accept.

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Interview with Paul Newman in Abraxas Unbound #7
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 2 weeks ago
A man of understanding…

A man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself.

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Ch. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
1 month 2 weeks ago
The dead govern the living....

The dead govern the living.

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Le Catéchisme positiviste
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
3 months 1 week ago
No multitude is able to acquire...

No multitude is able to acquire any art whatsoever. Then if there is a kingly art, neither the collective body of the wealthy nor the whole people could ever acquire this science of statesmanship.

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Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
2 months 2 weeks ago
I had hoped that out of...

I had hoped that out of so many stories you would at least have produced one or two, which could hardly be questioned, and which would clearly show that ghosts or spectres exist. The case you relate... seems to me laughable. In like manner it would be tedious here to examine all the stories of people, who have written on these trifles. To be brief, I cite the instance of Julius Caesar, who, as Suetonius testifies, laughed at such things and yet was happy. ...And so should all who reflect on the human imagination, and the effects of the emotions, laugh at such notions; whatever Lavater and others, who have gone dreaming with him in the matter, may produce to the contrary.

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Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54).
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 week 3 days ago
The Anarchists are right in everything;...

The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without authority, there could not be worse violence than that of authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. "To establish Anarchy." "Anarchy will be instituted." But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require protection from governmental power, and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power.

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"On Anarchy", in Pamphlets : Translated from the Russian (1900) as translated by Aylmer Maude, p. 22
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 1 week ago
All that the conscious ego can...

All that the conscious ego can do is to formulate wishes, which are then carried out by forces which it controls very little and understands not at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
"Say what you like," we shall...

"Say what you like," we shall be told, "the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, 'this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.' And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else." It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
2 months ago
He who intends to enjoy life...

He who intends to enjoy life should not be busy about many things, and in what he does should not undertake what exceeds his natural capacity. On the contrary, he should have himself so in hand that even when fortune comes his way, and is apparently ready to lead him on to higher things, he should put her aside and not o'erreach his powers. For a being of moderate size is safer than one that bulks too big.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
3 months 1 week ago
Law could never, by determining exactly...

Law could never, by determining exactly what is noblest and must just for one and all, enjoin upon them that which is best; for the differences of men and of actions and the fact that nothing, I may say, in human life is ever at rest, forbid any science whatsoever to promulgate any simple rule for everything and for all time. So, that which is persistently simple is inapplicable to things which are never simple.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 2 weeks ago
For all knowledge and wonder (which...

For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.

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Book I, i, 3
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
I am condemned...

I am condemned to be free.

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Part 4, chapter 1
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 1 week ago
...this Jewish doctrine of the primacy...

...this Jewish doctrine of the primacy of economic values has found the widest acceptance and been most whole-heartedly acted upon. From America it has begun to infect the rest of the world. We may be pardoned for wishing that the Jews had remained not forty, but four thousand years in their repulsive wilderness.

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"One and Many," pp. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
2 months 1 week ago
It is the principle of antipathy...

It is the principle of antipathy which leads us to speak of offences as deserving punishment. It is the corresponding principle of sympathy which leads us to speak of certain actions as meriting reward. This word merit can only lead to passion and error. It is effects good or bad which we ought alone to consider.

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MSS 29, 32, University College Collection
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 week 3 days ago
After Plotinus, says Schassler, fifteen centuries...

After Plotinus, says Schassler, fifteen centuries passed without the slightest scientific interest for the world of beauty and art. ...In reality, nothing of the kind happened. The science of aesthetics ... neither did nor could vanish, because it never existed. ... the Greeks were so little developed that goodness and beauty seemed to coincide. On that obsolete Greek view of life the science of aesthetics was invented by men of the eighteenth century, and especially shaped and mounted in Baumgarten's theory. The Greeks (as anyone may read in Bénard's book on Aristotle and Walter's work on Plato) never had a science of aesthetics.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 1 week ago
Men use thought…

Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

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Dialogue 14, Le Chapon et la Poularde (1766); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed., 1919
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
1 month 1 week ago
But like the desire for eternal...

But like the desire for eternal life, the desire for omniscience and absolute perfection is merely an imaginary desire; and, as history and daily experience prove, the supposed human striving for unlimited knowledge and perfection is a myth. Man has no desire to know everything; he only wants to know the things to which he is particularly drawn.

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Lecture XXX, Atheism alone a Positive View
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 2 weeks ago
In America the majority raises formidable...

In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.

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Chapter XV, in a section titled Tryanny of the Majority.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 1 week ago
The fact that labour is external...

The fact that labour is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself.

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Estranged Labour, p. 30.
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
3 weeks 3 days ago
It is obvious that many women...

It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to re-appropriate the term "feminism," to focus on the fact that to be "feminist" in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 weeks 5 days ago
The struggle between the opponents and...

The struggle between the opponents and defenders of capitalism is a struggle between innovators who do not know what innovation to make and conservatives who do not know what to conserve.

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p. 233
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 2 weeks ago
The main business of religions is...

The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality.

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Book One, Chapter V.
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 1 week ago
Since the Devil is the adversary...

Since the Devil is the adversary of Christ he should occupy a position equivalent to his and be the Son of God as well. Satan would be the first Son of God and Christ the second.

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Paris, 1991, p. 207. As quoted in Curzio Nitoglia
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
Of course a war is entertaining....

Of course a war is entertaining. The immediate fear and suffering of the humans is a legitimate and pleasing refreshment for our myriads of toiling workers. But what permanent good does it do us unless we make use of it for bringing souls to Our Father Below? When I see the temporal suffering of humans who finally escape us, I feel as if I had been allowed to taste the first course of a rich banquet and then denied all the rest. It is worse than not to have tasted it at all. The Enemy, true to His barbarous methods of warfare, allows us to see the short misery of His favourites only to tantalize and torment us - to mock the incessant hunger, which, during this present phase of great conflict, His blockade is admittedly imposing.

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Letter V
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 6 days ago
We make choices, decisions, as long...

We make choices, decisions, as long as we keep to the surface of things; once we reach the depths, we can neither choose nor decide, we can do nothing but regret the surface...

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 3 weeks ago
When the Head and members are...

When the Head and members are despised, then the whole Christ is despised, for the whole Christ, Head and body, is that just man against whom deceitful lips speak iniquity (Ps. 30:19).

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p.425
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months ago
There is no body but eats...

There is no body but eats and drinks. But they are few who can distinguish flavors.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
2 months 1 week ago
The true is the whole…

The true is the whole.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 6 days ago
Frazer is much more savage than...

Frazer is much more savage than most of his savages, for they are not as far removed from the understanding of spiritual matter as a twentieth-century Englishman. His explanations of primitive practices are much cruder than the meaning of these practices themselves.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 131
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 1 week ago
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its...

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

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Section 1, paragraph 14.
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 weeks 5 days ago
The human soul has need of...

The human soul has need of truth and of freedom of expression. The need for truth requires that intellectual culture should be universally accessible, and that it should be able to be acquired in an environment neither physically remote nor psychologically alien.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
The Religion that is afraid of...

The Religion that is afraid of science dishonours God and commits suicide. It acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legislates, tyrannizes over a village of God's empires but is not the immutable universal law. Every influx of atheism, of skepticism is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion and making way for truth.

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March 4, 1831
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 3 days ago
Experience has repeatedly confirmed that well-known...

Experience has repeatedly confirmed that well-known maxim of Bacon's that "a little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." At the same time, when Bacon penned that sage epigram... he forgot to add that the God to whom depth in philosophy brings back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them.

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Ch. I
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
Blessed are those who have no...

Blessed are those who have no talent!

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February 1850
Philosophical Maxims
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