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Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 2 weeks ago
The concept of labor is not...

The concept of labor is not peripheral in Hegel's system, but is the central notion through which he conceives the development of society. Driven by the insight that opened this dimension to him, Hegel describes the mode of integration prevailing in a commodity-producing society in terms that clearly fore-shadow Marx's critical approach.

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P. 78
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
2 months 5 days ago
If the importance of science does...

If the importance of science does not lie in its constituting the whole of human knowledge, even less does it lie, in my view, in its technological applications. Science at the best is a way of coming to know, and hopefully a way of acquiring some reverence for, the wonders of nature. The philosophical study of science, at the best, has always been a way of coming to understand both some of the nature and some of the limitations of human reason. These seem to me to be sufficient grounds for taking science and philosophy of science seriously; they do not justify science worship.

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"Introduction: Science as approximation to truth"
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 3 weeks ago
For Genet, Beauty will be the...

For Genet, Beauty will be the offensive weapon that will enable him to beat the just on their own ground: that of value.

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p. 405
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
2 months 3 weeks ago
Democratic socialists are either proletarians who...

Democratic socialists are either proletarians who are not yet sufficiently clear about the conditions of the liberation of their class, or they are representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, a class which, prior to the achievement of democracy and the socialist measures to which it gives rise, has many interests in common with the proletariat. It follows that, in moments of action, the communists will have to come to an understanding with these democratic socialists, and in general to follow as far as possible a common policy with them - provided that these socialists do not enter into the service of the ruling bourgeoisie and attack the communists. It is clear that this form of co-operation in action does not exclude the discussion of differences.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 3 weeks ago
No feats of heroism are needed...

No feats of heroism are needed to achieve the greatest and most important changes in the existence of humanity; neither the armament of millions of soldiers, nor the construction of new roads and machines, nor the arrangement of exhibitions, nor the organization of workmen's unions, nor revolutions, nor barricades, nor explosions, nor the perfection of aerial navigation; but a change in public opinion. And to accomplish this change no exertions of the mind are needed, nor the refutation of anything in existence, nor the invention of any extraordinary novelty; it is only needful that we should not succumb to the erroneous, already defunct, public opinion of the past, which governments have induced artificially; it is only needful that each individual should say what he really feels or thinks, or at least that he should not say what he does not think.

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Ch. 17
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 2 weeks ago
Beauty is a pledge of the...

Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.

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Pt. IV, Expression; § 67: "Conclusion.", p. 270
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 1 week ago
He who is enamored of himself...

He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.

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H 10 Variant translation: He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage - he won't encounter many rivals.
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
2 months 3 weeks ago
I bow before the authority of...

I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason. I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give - such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 month 3 weeks ago
Europe owes its greatness to the...

Europe owes its greatness to the fact that the primary loyalties of the European people have been detached from religion and re-attached to the land. Those who believe that the division of Europe into nations has been the primary cause of European wars should remember the devastating wars of religion that national loyalties finally brought to an end. And they should study our art and literature for its inner meaning. In almost every case, they will discover, it is an art and literature not of war but of peace, an invocation of home and the routines of home, of gentleness, everydayness and enduring settlement.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 4 weeks ago
The instinctive foundation of the intellectual...

The instinctive foundation of the intellectual life is curiosity, which is found among animals in its elementary forms. Intelligence demands an alert curiosity, but it must be of a certain kind. The sort that leads village neighbours to try to peer through curtains after dark has no very high value. The widespread interest in gossip is inspired, not by a love of knowledge but by malice: no one gossips about other people's secret virtues, but only about their secret vices. Accordingly most gossip is untrue, but care is taken not to verify it. Our neighbour's sins, like the consolations of religion, are so agreeable that we do not stop to scrutinise the evidence closely.

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On Education, Especially in Early Childhood (1926), Ch. 2: The Aims of Education, p. 50
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 2 days ago
So many of my thoughts and...

So many of my thoughts and feelings are shared by the English that England has turned into a second native land of the mind for me.

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Journeys to England and Ireland, 1835.
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
2 months 1 week ago
The time is come when women...

The time is come when women must do something more than the "domestic hearth," which means nursing the infants, keeping a pretty house, having a good dinner and an entertaining party.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 3 weeks ago
The World and Life are one....

The World and Life are one. Physiological life is of course not "Life". And neither is psychological life. Life is the world. Ethics does not treat of the world. Ethics must be a condition of the world, like logic. Ethics and Aesthetics are one.

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Journal entry (24 July 1916), p. 77e
Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
6 days ago
Instead of holding on to the...

Instead of holding on to the Biblical view that we are made in the image of God, we come to realize that we are made in the image of the monkey.

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p. 36
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
3 months 4 weeks ago
Life has a value only when...

Life has a value only when it has something valuable as its object.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 3 weeks ago
It's better to bet on this...

It's better to bet on this life than on the next.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
1 week 6 days ago
Look upon yourself as more powerful...

Look upon yourself as more powerful than they give you out for, and you have more power; look upon yourself as more, and you have more.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 318
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
2 months 2 weeks ago
My path was not the normal...

My path was not the normal one of professors of philosophy. I did not intend to become a doctor of philosophy by studying philosophy (I am in fact a doctor of medicine) nor did I by any means, intend originally to qualify for a professorship by a dissertation on philosophy. To decide to become a philosopher seemed as foolish to me as to decide to become a poet. Since my schooldays, however, I was guided by philosophical questions. Philosophy seemed to me the supreme, even the sole, concern of man. Yet a certain awe kept me from making it my profession.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 5 days ago
Valor is stability, not of legs...

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2 weeks 6 days ago
One of the most striking signs...

One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres.

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Propylaea (1798) Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 4 weeks ago
The rush to California, for instance,...

The rush to California, for instance, and the attitude, not merely of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation to it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society!

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p. 487
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 2 weeks ago
To the mind of the ancients,...

To the mind of the ancients, who knew something of such matters, liberty and prosperity seemed hardly compatible, yet modern liberalism wants them together.

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"The Irony of Liberalism"
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1 week 2 days ago
Let us not violate the RIGHT...

Let us not violate the RIGHT of the artist to express exclusively his own experiences and introspections, disregarding everything that happens in the world beyond. Let us not DEMAND of the artist, but - reproach, beg, urge and entice him - that we may be allowed to do. After all, only in part does he himself develop his talent; the greater part of it is blown into him at birth as a finished product, and the gift of talent imposes responsibility on his free will. Let us assume that the artist does not OWE anybody anything: nevertheless, it is painful to see how, by retiring into his self-made worlds or the spaces of his subjective whims, he CAN surrender the real world into the hands of men who are mercenary, if not worthless, if not insane.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 4 weeks ago
I assert, that the ancient Whigs...

I assert, that the ancient Whigs held doctrines, totally different from those I have last mentioned. I assert, that the foundations laid down by the Commons, on the trial of Doctor Sacheverel, for justifying the revolution of 1688, are the very same laid down in Mr. Burke's Reflections; that is to say,-a breach of the original contract, implied and expressed in the constitution of this country, as a scheme of government fundamentally and inviolably fixed in King, Lords, and Commons.-That the fundamental subversion of this antient constitution, by one of its parts, having been attempted, and in effect accomplished, justified the Revolution. That it was justified only upon the necessity of the case; as the only means left for the recovery of that antient constitution, formed by the original contract of the British state; as well as for the future preservation of the same government. These are, the points to be proved.

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p. 411
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 3 weeks ago
There is something which unites magic...

There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.

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Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
3 months 2 weeks ago
I regard Peter as one of...

I regard Peter as one of the great moralists, because I suspect that more than anyone he has helped to change the attitudes of very many people to the sufferings of animals. Peter is a utilitarian in normative ethics, and a humane attitude to animals is a natural corollary of utilitarianism. Utilitarian concern for animals goes back to Bentham, who, presumably alluding to the Kantians, said that the question was not whether animals can reason, but whether they can suffer.

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J. J. C. Smart, Reply to Singer, in Philip Pettit, Richard Sylvan and Jean Norman (eds.), Metaphysics and Morality: Essays in Honour of J. J. C. Smart, Oxford, 1987, p. 192
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 1 week ago
He that defers his charity 'till...

He that defers his charity 'till he is dead, is (if a man weighs it rightly) rather liberal of another man's, than of his own.

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Ornamenta Rationalia, [§55]
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
2 months 2 weeks ago
The mollusk's motto would be: one...

The mollusk's motto would be: one must live to build one's house, and not build one's house to live in.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
6 days ago
It is not when he is...

It is not when he is working in the office but when he is lying idly on the sand that his soul utters, "Life is beautiful."

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Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 4 weeks ago
'No one but you and one...

'No one but you and one 'jade' I have fallen in love with, to my ruin. But being in love doesn't mean loving. You may be in love with a woman and yet hate her.

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Philosophical Maxims
Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
2 months 2 weeks ago
Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions...

Creatures inveterately wrong in their inductions have a pathetic but praiseworthy tendency to die before reproducing their kind.

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"Natural Kinds", in Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (1969), p. 126
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 1 week ago
Remember that it is not he...

Remember that it is not he who gives abuse or blows who affronts, but the view we take of these things as insulting. When, therefore, any one provokes you, be assured that it is your own opinion which provokes you.

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(20).
Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
3 weeks 3 days ago
Art enlarges experience by admitting us...

Art enlarges experience by admitting us to the inner life of others.

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Ch. IV: "The Golden Rule and After", p. 110.
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months ago
But let us not forget this...
But let us not forget this either: it is enough to create new names and estimations and probabilities in order to create in the long run new "things."
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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 3 weeks ago
To be ignorant of the past...

To be ignorant of the past is to remain a child.

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Cicero
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
3 weeks 3 days ago
Nothing is more opposed to concord...

Nothing is more opposed to concord than the present condition of the domestic and salaried classes. By reducing this poor multitude to a condition very like slavery, civilization, on the rebound, imposes chains upon those who seem to dominate. Thus notables do not dare to amuse themselves openly at times when the people suffer from poverty. The rich are subject to individual as well as collective servitude. A wealthy man is often the slave of his valets. However in harmony the valet himself enjoys complete independence, while the rich are served with an assiduity and a devotion of which one sees not a trace in civilization.

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Oeuvres completetes de Charles Fourier
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 3 weeks ago
I do feel visceral revulsion at...

I do feel visceral revulsion at the burka because for me it is a symbol of the oppression of women.

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As quoted in Richard Dawkins causes outcry after likening the burka to a bin liner (10 August 2010), The Telegraph.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 3 weeks ago
For anyone who is alone, without...

For anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence one must choose a master, God being out of style.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 week 2 days ago
Ego is a social institution with...

Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word "water" is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.

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Buddhism : The Religion of No-Religion
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 3 days ago
All things are artificial, for nature...

All things are artificial, for nature is the Art of God.

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Section 16
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months ago
No power can maintain itself if...
No power can maintain itself if only hypocrites represent it.
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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
2 weeks 5 days ago
Normal science, the puzzle-solving activity we...

Normal science, the puzzle-solving activity we have just examined, is a highly cumulative enterprise, eminently successful in its aim, the steady extension of the scope and precision of scientific knowledge. In all these respects it fits with great precision the most usual image of scientific work. Yet one standard product of the scientific enterprise is missing. Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.

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p. 52
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
To conceive a thought - just...

To conceive a thought - just one, but one that would tear the universe to pieces.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is the furious longing to...

It is the furious longing to give finality to the Universe, to make it conscious and personal, that has brought us to believe in God, to wish that God may exist, to create God, in a word. To create Him, yes! This saying ought not to scandalize even the most devout theist. For to believe in God is, in a certain sense, to create Him, although He first creates us. It is He who is continually creating Himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
4 months 1 day ago
Let's not be dazzled by the...

Let's not be dazzled by the sententious glitter with which error and lying often cover themselves. Society is not created by the crowd, and bodies come together in vain when hearts reject each other. The truly sociable man is more difficult in his relationships than others; those which consist only in false appearances cannot suit him. He prefers to live far from wicked men without thinking about them, than to see them and hate them. He prefers to flee his enemy rather than seek him out to harm him. A person who knows no other society than that of the heart will not seek his society in your circles. That is How J.J. must have thought and behaved before the conspiracy of which he is the object.

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Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 3 weeks ago
Human vanity cherishes the absurd notion...

Human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.

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Chapter 3 "Accumulating Small Change" (p. 50)
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 day ago
The Greeks follow....
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Main Content / General
William James
William James
3 months 4 weeks ago
Pray go back and recollect one...

Pray go back and recollect one of the conclusions to which I sought to lead you in my very first lecture. You may remember how I there argued against the notion that the worth of a thing can be decided by its origin. Our spiritual judgment, I said, our opinion of the significance and value of a human event or condition, must be decided on empirical grounds exclusively. If the fruits for life of the state of conversion are good, we ought to idealize and venerate it, even though it be a piece of natural psychology; if not, we ought to make short work of it, no matter what supernatural being may have infused it.

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Lecture IX, "Conversion, concluded"
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 4 weeks ago
Better to be despised for too...

Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mozi
Mozi
6 days ago
To accomplish anything whatsoever one must...

To accomplish anything whatsoever one must have standards. None have yet accomplished anything without them.

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Book 1; On the necessity of standards
Philosophical Maxims
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