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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 weeks ago
We often have need of a...

We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves. Even if my philosophy does not extend to discovering anything new, it does nevertheless possess the courage to regard as questionable what has long been thought true.

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B 49
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schelling
Friedrich Schelling
1 month 1 week ago
Countless attempts have been made to...

Countless attempts have been made to no avail to construct a continuity from the supreme principle of the intellectual world to the finite world. The oldest and most frequent of these attempts is well known: the principle of emanation, according to which the outflowings from the godhead, in gradual increments and detachment from the ordinary source, losing their divine perfection until, in the end, they pass into the opposite (matter, privation), just as light is finally confined by darkness.

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P. 24
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 1 week ago
The great decisions of human life...

The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. Each of us carries his own life-form-an indeterminable form which cannot be superseded by any other.

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p. 69
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 2 weeks ago
All our knowledge falls with the...

All our knowledge falls with the bounds of experience.

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A 146, B 185
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
The real nature of the present...

The real nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, all that was not present did not exist.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 2 weeks ago
Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample...

Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging.

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53
Philosophical Maxims
Proclus
Proclus
1 month 3 weeks ago
For this, to draw a right...

For this, to draw a right line from every point, to every point, follows the definition, which says, that a line is the flux of a point, and a right line an indeclinable and inflexible flow.

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Book III. Concerning Petitions and Axioms.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
I don't like the spirit of...

I don't like the spirit of socialism - I think freedom is the basis of everything.

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Letter to Constance Malleson (Colette), September 29, 1916
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 2 weeks ago
The world is all a carcass...

The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
2 months 2 weeks ago
When Scipio became consul and was...

When Scipio became consul and was keen on getting the province of Africa, promising that Carthage should be completely destroyed, and the senate would not agree to this because Fabius Maximus was against it, he threatened to appeal to the people, for he knew full well how pleasing such projects are to the populace.

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Book 1, Ch. 53 (as translated by LJ Walker and B Crick)
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
This is the terrible fix we...

This is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again....God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from.

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Book I, Chapter 5, "We Have Cause to Be Uneasy"
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 month 1 week ago
Blood will stream over Europe until...

Blood will stream over Europe until the nations become aware of the frightful madness which drives them in circles. And then, struck by celestial music and made gentle, they approach their former altars all together, hear about the works of peace, and hold a great celebration of peace with fervent tears before the smoking altars.

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As quoted in the Fourth Leaflet of the White Rose
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 2 weeks ago
If a woman becomes weary and...

If a woman becomes weary and at last dead from bearing, that matters not; let her only die from bearing, she is there to do it.

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Sermon Von dem ehelichen Stande (1519), p. 41 - as quoted in The Ethic of Freethought: A Selection of Essays and Lectures (1888) by Karl Pearson
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
2 months 2 weeks ago
Although the whole of this life...

Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it.

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As quoted in The World of Mathematics (1956) by J. R. Newman, p. 1832
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
1 month 4 weeks ago
A prating barber asked Archelaus how...

A prating barber asked Archelaus how he would be trimmed. He answered, "In silence."

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33 Archelaus
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
They [Christians] believe that the living,...

They [Christians] believe that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else. And that, by the way, is perhaps the most important difference between Christianity and all other religions: that in Christianity God is not an impersonal thing nor a static thing-not even just one person-but a dynamic pulsating activity, a life, a kind of drama, almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance ... (The) pattern of this three-personal life is ... the great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality.

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Book IV, Chapter 4, "Good Infection"
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
We are spinning our own fates,...

We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 week 3 days ago
The present is always invisible because...

The present is always invisible because it's environmental. No environment is perceptible, simply because it saturates the whole field of attention.

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Mademoiselle: the magazine for the smart young woman, Volume 64, 1966, p. 114
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 4 days ago
The real field of knowledge is...

The real field of knowledge is not the given fact about things as they are, but the critical evaluation of them as a prelude to passing beyond their given form. Knowledge deals with appearances in order to get beyond them. .... The concept of reality has thus turned into the concept of possibility. The real is not yet 'actual,' but is at first only the possibility of an actual.

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P. 145
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 4 days ago
Perhaps the only true dignity of...

Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 3 days ago
Art is not the possession of...

Art is not the possession of the few who are recognized writers, painters, musicians; it is the authentic expression of any and all individuality. Those who have the gift of creative expression in unusually large measure disclose the meaning of the individuality of others to those others. In participating in the work of art, they become artists in their activity. They learn to know and honor individuality in whatever form it appears. The fountains of creative activity are discovered and released. The free individuality which is the source of art is also the final source of creative development in time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 1 week ago
As far as we can discern,...

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

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p. 326
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
You will hear every day the...

You will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear, that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. "What is this Truth you seek? What is this Beauty?" men will ask, with derision. If, nevertheless, God have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say, "As others do, so will I. I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land, and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season." - then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men. The hour of that choice is the crisis of your history; and see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect. ... Bend to the persuasion which is flowing to you from every object in Nature, to be its tongue to the heart of man, and to show the besotted world how passing fair is wisdom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 week 5 days ago
When I started life Hegelianism was...

When I started life Hegelianism was the basis of everything: it was in the air, found expression in magazine and newspaper articles, in novels and essays, in art, in histories, in sermons, and in conversation. A man unacquainted with Hegel had no right to speak: he who wished to know the truth studied Hegel. Everything rested on him; and suddenly forty years have gone by and there is nothing left of him, he is not even mentioned - as though he had never existed. And what is most remarkable is that, like pseudo-Christianity, Hegelianism fell not because anyone refuted it, but because it suddenly became evident that neither the one nor the other was needed by our learned, educated world.

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Chapter XXIX
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 2 weeks ago
Collectively, the more civilized men are,...

Collectively, the more civilized men are, the more they are actors. They assume the appearance of attachment, of esteem for others, of modesty, and of disinterestedness, without ever deceiving anyone, because everyone understands that nothing sincere is meant. Persons are familiar with this, and it is even a good thing that this is so in this world, for when men play these roles, virtues are gradually established, whose appearance had up until now only been affected. These virtues ultimately will become part of the actor's disposition. To deceive the deceiver in ourselves, or the tendency to deceive, is a fresh return to obedience.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 37
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 week 1 day ago
The cruelest lies are often told...

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue?

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Truth of Intercourse.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 1 week ago
A serious and good philosophical work...

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

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As quoted in "A View from the Asylum" in Philosophical Investigations from the Sanctity of the Press (2004), by Henry Dribble, p. 87
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
1 month 1 week ago
The power of thought is the...

The power of thought is the light of knowledge, the power of will is the energy of character, the power of heart is love. Reason, love and power of will are perfections of man.

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Introduction, Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 99
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
2 months 2 weeks ago
My purpose is to explain…

My purpose is to explain, not the meaning of words, but the nature of things.

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Part III, Def. XX
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 3 weeks ago
When you wander, as you often...

When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.

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Letter of Expostulation to Coke, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed.
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 4 days ago
Behold, we go up to Jerusalem;...

Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, And shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again.

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20:18-19 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 1 week ago
That which distinguishes the Christian narrow...

That which distinguishes the Christian narrow way from the common human narrow way is the voluntary. Christ was not someone who coveted earthly things but had to be satisfied with poverty, no, he chose poverty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
1 month 2 weeks ago
The lowest degree of education is...

The lowest degree of education is to distinguish oneself from the ignorant ordinary man. The educated man does not loathe honey even if he finds it in the surgeon's cupping-glass; he realizes that the cupping glass does not essentially alter the honey. The natural aversion from it in such a case rests on popular ignorance, arising from the fact that the cupping-glass is made only for impure blood. Men imagine that the blood is impure because it is in the cupping-glass, and are not aware that the impurity is due to a property.

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III. The Classes of Seekers, p. 31.
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 3 weeks ago
In a quarrel for earth, turn...

In a quarrel for earth, turn not to earth.

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First Homily, as translated by John Burnaby (1955), p. 267
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 week 3 days ago
Electric technology is directly related to...

Electric technology is directly related to our central nervous systems, so it is ridiculous to talk of "what the public wants" played over its own nerves.

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(p. 68)
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
1 month 4 days ago
All the living hold together, and...

All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.

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Creative Evolution (1907), Chapter III. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911, p. 271
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
1 month 2 weeks ago
Since I have spread my wings...

Since I have spread my wings to purpose high, The more beneath my feet the clouds I see, The more I give the winds my pinions free, Spurning the earth and soaring to the sky.

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As quoted in "Giordano Bruno" by Thomas Davidson, in The Index Vol. VI. No. 36 (4 March 1886), p. 429
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 4 days ago
The Son of man shall be...

The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men: And they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again.

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17:22-23 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Antisthenes
Antisthenes
2 months 2 days ago
There is no work so mean,...

There is no work so mean, but it would amply serve me to furnish me with sustenance.

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iv. 35
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 1 week ago
[The career a young man should...

The career a young man should choose should be] one that is most consonant with our dignity, one that is based on ideas of whose truth we are wholly convinced, one that offers us largest scope in working for humanity and approaching that general goal towards which each profession offers only one of the means: the goal of perfection ... If he works only for himself he can become a famous scholar, a great sage, an excellent imaginative writer [Dichter], but never a perfected, a truly great man.

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in Karl Marx and World Literature (1976) by S. S. Prawer, p. 2.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 1 week ago
If a false thought is so...

If a false thought is so much as expressed boldly and clearly, a great deal has already been gained.

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p. 86e
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 1 week ago
People are often reproached because their...

People are often reproached because their desires are directed mainly to money and they are fonder of it than of anything else. Yet it is natural and even inevitable for them to love that which, as an untiring Proteus, is ready at any moment to convert itself into the particular object of our fickle desires and manifold needs. Thus every other blessing can satisfy only one desire and one need; for instance, food is good only to the hungry, wine only for the healthy, medicine for the sick, a fur coat for winter, women for youth, and so on. Consequently, all these are only ... relatively good. Money alone is the absolutely good thing because it meets not merely one need in concreto, but needs generally in abstracto.

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E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 347
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 1 week ago
All the cruelty and torment of...

All the cruelty and torment of which the world is full is in fact merely the necessary result of the totality of the forms under which the will to live is objectified.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 14, § 164
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 2 weeks ago
That immense framework and planking of...
That immense framework and planking of concepts to which the needy man clings his whole life long in order to preserve himself is nothing but a scaffolding and toy for the most audacious feats of the liberated intellect. And when it smashes this framework to pieces, throws it into confusion, and puts it back together in an ironic fashion, pairing the most alien things and separating the closest, it is demonstrating that it has no need of these makeshifts of indigence and that it will now be guided by intuitions rather than by concepts. There is no regular path which leads from these intuitions into the land of ghostly schemata, the land of abstractions. There exists no word for these intuitions; when man sees them he grows dumb, or else he speaks only in forbidden metaphors and in unheard of combinations of concepts. He does this so that by shattering and mocking the old conceptual barriers he may at least correspond creatively to the impression of the powerful present intuition.
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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 3 days ago
I have learned...
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Main Content / General
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 6 days ago
The chief function of the disciplinary...

The chief function of the disciplinary power is to 'train', rather than to select and to levy; or, no doubt, to train in order to levy and select all the more. It does not link forces together in order to reduce them; it seeks to bind them together in such a way as to multiply and use them.

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Part Three, The Means of Correct Training
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
A habit of basing convictions upon...

A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree of certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world is suffering. But at present, in most countries, education aims at preventing the growth of such a habit, and men who refuse to profess belief in some system of unfounded dogmas are not considered suitable as teachers of the young.

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preface xxiii-xxiv
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
Go where he will, the wise...

Go where he will, the wise man is at home, His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome.

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Wood-notes, st. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 week 5 days ago
Now about your family. Do you...

Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly beautiful.

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Bk. I, Ch. I
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
6 months 2 weeks ago
The medium of the chorus

In his seminar on The Ethic of Psychoanalysis, Lacan speaks of the role of the Chorus in classical tragedy: we, the spectators, came to the theatre worried, full of everyday problems, unable to adjust without reserve to the problems of the play, that is to feel the required fears and compassions - but not problem, there is a chorus, who feels the sorrow and the compassion instead of us - or, more precisely, we feel the required emotions through the medium of the chorus: 'You are then relieved of all worries, even if you do not feel anything, the Chorus will do so in your place.'

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Philosophical Maxims
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