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Friedrich Schelling
Friedrich Schelling
3 months 2 weeks ago
Yes! We believe in a higher...

Yes! We believe in a higher principle than your virtue and the kind of morality you speak of so paltrily and without much conviction. We believe that there is no imperative or reward for virtue for the soul because it simply acts according to the necessity of its inherent nature. The moral imperative expresses itself in an ought and presupposes the concept of an evil next to that of good.

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P. 43
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 6 days ago
As Cæsar was at supper the...

As Cæsar was at supper the discourse was of death,-which sort was the best. "That," said he, "which is unexpected."

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Cæsar
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 2 weeks ago
Good tests kill flawed theories; we...

Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.

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As quoted in My Universe : A Transcendent Reality (2011) by Alex Vary, Part II
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
What potent blood hath modest May!...

What potent blood hath modest May!

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May-Day
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
2 months 3 weeks ago
Dualism makes the problem insoluble; materialism...

Dualism makes the problem insoluble; materialism denies the existence of any phenomenon to study, and hence of any problem.

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Consciousness and Language (2002) p. 47.
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 2 weeks ago
In general, the art of government…

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.

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"Money", 1770
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 1 week ago
If the individual were no longer...

If the individual were no longer compelled to prove himself on the market, as a free economic subject, the disappearance of this kind of freedom would be one of the greatest achievements of civilization. The technological processes of mechanization and standardization might release individual energy into a yet uncharted realm of freedom beyond necessity. The very structure of human existence would be altered; the individual would be liberated from the work world's imposing upon him alien needs and alien possibilities. The individual would be free to exert autonomy over a life that would be his own.

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p. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 2 weeks ago
This fact, that the opposite of...

This fact, that the opposite of sin is by no means virtue, has been overlooked. The latter is partly a pagan view, which is content with a merely human standard, and which for that very reason does not know what sin is, that all sin is before God. No, the opposite of sin is faith.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 3 days ago
No man can suffer both severely...

No man can suffer both severely and for a long time; Nature, who loves us most tenderly, has so constituted us as to make pain either endurable or short.

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Philosophical Maxims
Polybius
Polybius
1 month 1 week ago
In all human affairs, and especially...

In all human affairs, and especially in those that relate to war, ...leave always some room to fortune, and to accidents which cannot be foreseen.

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The General History, Book II, Ch. 4 (trans. by Hampton)
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 1 week ago
We see that experience plays an...

We see that experience plays an indispensable role in the genesis of geometry; but it would be an error thence to conclude that geometry is, even in part, an experimental science. If it were experimental it would be only approximative and provisional. And what rough approximation!...The object of geometry is the study of a particular 'group'; but the general group concept pre-exists... in our minds. It is imposed on us, not as form of our sense, but as form of our understanding. Only, from among all the possible groups, that must be chosen... will be... the standard to which we shall refer natural phenomena.Experience guides us in this choice without forcing it upon us; it tells us not which is the truest geometry, but which is the most convenient.Notice that I have been able to describe the fantastic worlds... imagined without ceasing to employ the language of ordinary geometry.

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Ch. IV: Space and Geometry, Conclusions (1905) Tr. George Bruce Halstead
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
2 weeks 4 days ago
Professional standards, the standards of ambition...

Professional standards, the standards of ambition and selfishness, are always sliding downward toward expense, ostentation, and mediocrity. They tend always to narrow the ground of judgment. But amateur standards, the standards of love, are always straining upward toward the humble and the best. They enlarge the ground of judgment. The context of love is the world.

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The Responsibility of the Poet
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 1 day ago
Wipe out the imagination. Stop pulling...

Wipe out the imagination. Stop pulling the strings. Confine thyself to the present. ...Divide and distribute every object into the causal [formal] and the material. ...Let the wrong which is done by a man stay there where the wrong was done.

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VII, 29
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 months 1 week ago
Reason as an organ for perceiving...

Reason as an organ for perceiving the true nature of reality and determining the guiding principles of our lives has come to be regarded as obsolete.

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p. 18.
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 3 weeks ago
The infant runs toward it with...

The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.

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"Death"
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 2 weeks ago
To love life is to love...

To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings.

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Bk. XIV, ch. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
4 months 1 week ago
Now drown care in wine….

Now drown care in wine.

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Book I, ode vii, line 32
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 1 day ago
He who fears death either fears...

He who fears death either fears to lose all sensation or fears new sensations. In reality, you will either feel nothing at all, and therefore nothing evil, or else, if you can feel any sensations, you will be a new creature, and so will not have ceased to have life.

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VIII, 58
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 2 weeks ago
For us, with the rule of...

For us, with the rule of right and wrong given us by Christ, there is nothing for which we have no standard. And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.

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Bk. XIV, ch. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
5 months 1 day ago
I do not speak here of...

I do not speak here of divine truths... because they are infinitely superior to nature: God alone can place them in the soul... I know that he has desired that they should enter from the heart into the mind, and not from the mind into the heart, to humiliate that proud power of reasoning that pretends to the right to be the judge of the things that the will chooses; and to cure this infirm will which is wholly corrupted by its filthy attachments.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 3 weeks ago
The life of man is of...

The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.

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On Suicide
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
5 months 2 weeks ago
Whatever the subject of your...

Parmenides: Whatever the subject of your hypothesis, if you suppose that it is or is not, or that it experiences any other affection, you must consider what happens to it and to any other particular things you may choose, and to a greater number and to all in the same way; and you must consider other things in relation to themselves and to anything else you may choose in any instance, whether you suppose that the subject of your hypothesis exists or does not exist, if you are to train yourself completely to see the truth perfectly.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 week 1 day ago
I am a determinist. As...

I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will. The Jews believe in free will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine philosophically. In that respect, I am not a Jew.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 5 days ago
He who bases or thinks he...

He who bases or thinks he bases his conduct - his inward or his outward conduct, his feeling or his action - upon a dogma or a principle which he deems incontrovertible, runs the risk of becoming a fanatic, and moreover, the moment that this dogma is weakened or shattered, the morality based upon it gives way. If the earth that he thought firm begins to rock, he himself trembles at the earthquake, for we do not all come up to the standard of the ideal Stoic who remains undaunted among the ruins of a world shattered into atoms. Happily the stuff that is underneath a man's ideas will save him. For if a man should tell you that he does not defraud or cuckold his best friend only because he is afraid of hell, you may depend upon it that neither would he do so even if he were to cease to believe in hell, but that he would invent some other excuse instead. And this is all to the honor of the human race.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 1 week ago
By MANNERS, I mean not here...

By MANNERS, I mean not here Decency of behaviour; as how one man should salute another, or how a man should wash his mouth, or pick his teeth before company, and such other points of the Small Morals; But those qualities of mankind that concern their living together in Peace and Unity. To which end we are to consider that the Felicity of this life consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such Finis ultimus (utmost aim) nor Summum Bonum (greatest good) as is spoken of in the books of the old Moral Philosophers. Nor can a man any more live whose desires are at an end than he whose Senses and Imaginations are at a stand.

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The First Part, Chapter 11, p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 weeks 4 days ago
The basis of our government being...

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.

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Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington (16 January 1787) Lipscomb & Bergh ed. 6:57 Compare letter to John Norvell (11 June 1807), below.
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
3 months 2 weeks ago
A modest man is steady, an...

A modest man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous.

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Ch. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 3 weeks ago
A whole from necessary substances is...

A whole from necessary substances is impossible. The whole, therefore, of substances is a whole of contingent things, and the world consists essentially of only contingent things.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 2 weeks ago
Because machines could be made progressively...

Because machines could be made progressively more and more efficient, Western man came to believe that men and societies would automatically register a corresponding moral and spiritual improvement. Attention and allegiance came to be paid, not to Eternity, but to the Utopian future. External circumstances came to be regarded as more important than states of mind about external circumstances, and the end of human life was held to be action, with contemplation as a means to that end. These false and historically, aberrant and heretical doctrines are now systematically taught in our schools and repeated, day in, day out, by those anonymous writers of advertising copy who, more than any other teachers, provide European and American adults with their current philosophy of life. And so effective has been the propaganda that even professing Christians accept the heresy unquestioningly and are quite unconscious of its complete incompatibility with their own or anybody else's religion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 1 day ago
For Jung, the 'psychic world' (i.e....

For Jung, the 'psychic world' (i.e. the world of the mind) was an independent reality, and it was possible to travel there and make the acquaintance of its inhabitants.

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p. 164
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 2 weeks ago
For my own part, not believing...

For my own part, not believing in universal selfishness, I have no difficulty in admitting that Communism would even now be practicable among the elite of mankind, and may become so among the rest.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
In some lyceums they tell me...

In some lyceums they tell me that they have voted to exclude the subject of religion. But how do I know what their religion is, and when I am near to or far from it? I have walked into such an arena and done my best to make a clean breast of what religion I have experienced, and the audience never suspected what I was about.

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p. 490
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 3 days ago
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as...

Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.

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p. 135; Ch. 17, December 15, 1939.
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 4 days ago
Those who keep the masses of...

Those who keep the masses of men in subjection by exercising force and cruelty deprive them at once of two vital foods, liberty and obedience; for it is no longer within the power of such masses to accord their inner consent to the authority to which they are subjected. Those who encourage a state of things in which the hope of gain is the principal motive take away from men their obedience, for consent which is its essence is not something which can be sold.

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p. 97
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 1 week ago
As one advances in life, one...

As one advances in life, one realises more and more that the majority of men - and of women - are incapable of any other effort than that strictly imposed on them as a reaction to external compulsion. And for that reason, the few individuals we have come across who are capable of a spontaneous and joyous effort stand out isolated, monumentalised, so to speak, in our experience. These are the select men, the nobles, the only ones who are active and not merely reactive, for whom life is a perpetual striving, an incessant course of training. Training = askesis. These are the ascetics.

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Chap. VII: Noble Life And Common Life, Or Effort And Inertia
Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
4 months 3 weeks ago
René Descartes is more widely known...

René Descartes is more widely known as a philosopher than as a mathematician, although his philosophy has been controverted while his mathematics has not. ...In accordance with the ideals of his age, when experimental science was first seriously challenging arrogant speculation, Descartes set a greater store by his philosophy than his mathematics. But he fully appreciated the power of his new method in geometry.

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Eric Temple Bell, The Development of Mathematics
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Lucidity is not necessarily compatible with...

Lucidity is not necessarily compatible with life, actually not at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 1 day ago
Blot out vain pomp; check impulse;...

Blot out vain pomp; check impulse; quench appetite; keep reason under its own control.

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IX, 7
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 2 weeks ago
When reason rules, money is a...

When reason rules, money is a blessing.

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Maxim 50
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 2 weeks ago
This education, therefore, results at the...

This education, therefore, results at the very outset in knowledge which transcends all experience, which is abstract, absolute, and strictly universal, and which includes within itself beforehand all subsequently possible experience. On the other hand, the old education was concerned, as a rule, only with the actual qualities of things as they are and as they should be believed and rioted, without anyone being able to assign a reason for them. It aimed, therefore, at purely passive reception by means of the power of memory, which was completely at the service of things. It was, therefore, impossible to have any idea of the mind as an independent original principle of things themselves.

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General Nature of New Eduction p. 28
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Turning your back...
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Main Content / General
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 1 week ago
Generally speaking, all the authorities exercising...

Generally speaking, all the authorities exercising individual control function according to a double mode; that of binary division and branding (mad/sane; dangerous/harmless; normal/abnormal); and that of coercive assignment, of differential distribution (who he is; where he must be; how he is to be characterized' how he is to be recognized' how a constant surveillance is to be exercised over him in a individual way, etc.).

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Part Four, Complete and austere institutions
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months ago
Evil destroyeth itself.

Evil destroyeth itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
1 month 3 weeks ago
Cinema is an old whore, like...

Cinema is an old whore, like circus and variety, who knows how to give many kinds of pleasure. Besides, you can't teach old fleas new dogs.

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As quoted in in The Atlantic
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 weeks 4 days ago
We might as well say that...

We might as well say that the Newtonian system of philosophy is a part of the common law, as that the Christian religion is. The truth is that Christianity and Newtonianism being reason and verity itself, in the opinion of all but infidels and Cartesians, they are protected under the wings of the common law from the dominion of other sects, but not erected into dominion over them.

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To Dr. Thomas Cooper Monticello, February 10, 1814
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 2 weeks ago
Self-education is, I firmly believe, the...

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
4 months 1 week ago
Contemporary intellectuals have given up the...

Contemporary intellectuals have given up the Enlightenment assumption that religion, myth, and tradition can be opposed to something ahistorical, something common to all human beings qua human.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 2 weeks ago
The significance of that 'absolute commandment',...

The significance of that 'absolute commandment', know thyself - whether we look at it in itself or under the historical circumstances of its first utterance - is not to promote mere self-knowledge in respect of the particular capacities, character, propensities, and foibles of the single self. The knowledge it commands means that of man's genuine reality - of what is essentially and ultimately true and real - of spirit as the true and essential being.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
3 months 1 week ago
To be old is a glorious...

To be old is a glorious thing when one has not unlearned what it means to begin, this old man had perhaps first learned it thoroughly in old age.

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p. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
5 months 6 days ago
The perfection of the effect demonstrates...

The perfection of the effect demonstrates the perfection of the cause, for a greater power brings about a more perfect effect. But God is the most perfect agent. Therefore, things created by Him obtain perfection from Him. So, to detract from the perfection of creatures is to detract from the perfection of divine power.

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III, 69, 15
Philosophical Maxims
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