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Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
1 month 2 weeks ago
The young watch television twenty-four hours...

The young watch television twenty-four hours a day, they don't read and they rarely listen. This incessant bombardment of images has developed a hypertrophied eye condition that's turning them into a race of mutants. They should pass a law for a total reeducation of the young, making children visit the Galleria Borghese on a daily basis.

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"Younger Generation"
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 2 days ago
I never yet touched a fig...

I never yet touched a fig leaf that didn't turn into a price tag.

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Humboldt's Gift (1975), p. 159
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
I decline the election. - It...

I decline the election. - It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.

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Speech at Bristol on declining the poll (9 September 1780), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II (1855), p. 170
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 1 week ago
By this means all knowledge degenerates...

By this means all knowledge degenerates into probability; and this probability is greater or less, according to our experience of the veracity or deceitfulness of our understanding, and according to the simplicity or intricacy of the question.

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Part 4, Section 1
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 1 week ago
For in spite of language, in...

For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.

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"Sermons in Cats"
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months 1 week ago
Freedom is the absolute right of...

Freedom is the absolute right of every human being to seek no other sanction for his actions but his own conscience, to determine these actions solely by his own will, and consequently to owe his first responsibility to himself alone.

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As quoted in Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, Daniel Guérin, New York: NY, Monthly Review Press (1970) p. 31
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 6 days ago
Seldom, or perhaps never, does a...

Seldom, or perhaps never, does a marriage develop into an individual relationship smoothly and without crises; there is no coming to consciousness without pain.

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p. 193
Philosophical Maxims
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
4 months 3 weeks ago
Love with delight….

Love with delight discourses in my mind Upon my lady's admirable gifts...Beyond the range of human intellect.

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Trattato Terzo, line 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 1 week ago
Those who believe that they are...

Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something.

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"Note on Dogma"
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 1 week ago
To stand on one leg and...

To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going on one's knees and thanking Him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
4 months 2 weeks ago
The world thought well of my...

The world thought well of my schoolmaster guardian, because he was neither a liar, nor a scamp, nor a gambler; but he was coarse, avaricious, and ignorant; he knew nothing beyond the confused lessons which he taught to his classes. He imagined that in forcing a youth to become a monk he would be offering a sacrifice acceptable to God. He used to boast of the many victims which he devoted annually to Dominic and Francis and Benedict.

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As quoted in Life and Letters of Erasmus: Lectures Delivered at Oxford 1893-4 (1899) by James Anthony Froude
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 1 week ago
The Quakers sent me books, from...

The Quakers sent me books, from which I learnt how they had, years ago, established beyond doubt the duty for a Christian of fulfilling the command of non-resistance to evil by force, and had exposed the error of the Church's teaching in allowing war and capital punishment.

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Chapter I, The Doctrine of Non-resistance to Evil by Force has been Professed by a Minority of Men from the Very Foundation of Christianity
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 3 weeks ago
The very same reason which one...

The very same reason which one man may regard as a motive for taking care to prolong his life may be regarded by another man as a motive for shooting himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 5 days ago
Don't say: "They must have something...

Don't say: "They must have something in common, or they would not be called 'games'" but look and see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them, you won't see something that is common to all, but similarities, affinities, and a whole series of them at that.

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To repeat: don't think, but look! § 66
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
4 months 1 week ago
What I had to say was...

What I had to say was so clear and I felt it so deeply that I am amazed by the tediousness, repetitiousness, verbiage, and disorder of this writing. What would have made it lively and vehement coming from another's pen is precisely what has made it dull and slack coming from mine. The subject was myself, and I no longer found on my own interest that zeal and vigor of courage which can exalt a generous soul only for another person's cause.

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On the Subject and Form of This Writing; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 2 weeks ago
...it is the peculiar and perpetual...

...it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives...

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Aphorism 46
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 1 week ago
All true metaphysics is taken from...

All true metaphysics is taken from the essential nature of the thinking faculty itself, and therefore in nowise invented, since it is not borrowed from experience, but contains the pure operations of thought, that is, conceptions and principles à priori, which the manifold of empirical presentations first of all brings into legitimate connection, by which it can become empirical knowledge, i.e. experience. ...mathematical physicists were thus quite unable to dispense with such metaphysical principles...

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Preface, Tr. Bax, 1883
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 6 days ago
To act is to anchor in...

To act is to anchor in the imminent future.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 6 days ago
One cannot live without motives. I...

One cannot live without motives. I have no motives left, and I am living.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 5 days ago
A hero looks death in the...

A hero looks death in the face, real death, not just the image of death. Behaving honourably in a crisis doesn't mean being able to act the part of a hero well, as in the theatre, it means being able to look death itself in the eye. For an actor may play lots of different roles, but at the end of it all he himself, the human being, is the one who has to die.

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p. 50e
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 week 2 days ago
Lay down true principles and adhere...

Lay down true principles and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people.

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Letter to Samuel Kercheval
Philosophical Maxims
Jerry Fodor
Jerry Fodor
1 week ago
The degree of confirmation assigned to...

The degree of confirmation assigned to any given hypothesis is sensitive to properties of the entire belief system ... simplicity, plausibility, and conservatism are properties that theories have in virtue of their relation to the whole structure of scientific beliefs taken collectively. A measure of conservatism or simplicity would be a metric over global properties of belief systems.

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p. 107-108 as cited in: Philip Robbins, "Modularity of Mind", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
There are only two cases...
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Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 3 weeks ago
Attention consists of suspending our thought,...

Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make use of.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1 month 2 days ago
A noble person attracts noble people,...

A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.

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Torquato Tasso, Act I, sc. i
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 1 week ago
A criminal who, having renounced reason...

A criminal who, having renounced reason ... hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or tyger, one of those wild savage beasts with whom men can have no society nor security. And upon this is grounded the great law of Nature, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."

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Second Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. II, sec. 11
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 week ago
All meaning alters with acceleration, because...

All meaning alters with acceleration, because all patterns of personal and political interdependence change with any acceleration of information.

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(p. 178-179)
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 1 week ago
To what extent can truth endure...
To what extent can truth endure incorporation? That is the question; that is the experiment.
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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 1 week ago
Any man more right than his...

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 1 week ago
Because of the way that myth...
Because of the way that myth takes it for granted that miracles are always happening, the waking life of a mythically inspired people the ancient Greeks, for instance more closely resembles a dream than it does the waking world of a scientifically disenchanted thinker.
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Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
3 months 1 day ago
Well both original seizure and subsequent...

Well both original seizure and subsequent critical discrimination have equal claims, each to its own complete development and must not be forgotten that direct and unreasoned impression comes first. There is such occasions something of the quality of the wind that bloweth where it listeth. Sometimes it comes and sometimes it does not, even in the presence of the same object. It cannot be forced and when it does not arrive it is not wise to seek to recover by direct action the first fine rapture.

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p. 151
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 5 days ago
The introduction of free competition is...

The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration that from now on the members of society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in society. Free competition is necessary for the establishment of big industry, because it is the only condition of society in which big industry can make its way.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 day ago
Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps...

Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the best judgement not of this country only, but of Europe at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion, That Shakspeare is the chief of all Poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of depth; placid joyous strength; all things imaged in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea!

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Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 months 1 week ago
Gender is a kind of imitation...

Gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact, it is a kind of imitation that produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation itself.

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"Imitation and Gender Insubordination" in Inside/Out (1991) edited by Diana Fuss
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 1 week ago
It is an odd fact that...

It is an odd fact that anyone who wishes to start a war must always make it appear that he is fighting in a just cause even if the real motive is naked aggression. Fortunately for the would-be aggressor, a "just cause" is very easy to find.

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Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
4 weeks 1 day ago
It might have been supposed that...

It might have been supposed that the building of 30,000 miles of railways would have brought a measure of prosperity to India. But these railways were built not for India but for England; not for the benefit of the Hindu, but for the purposes of the British army and British trade... The railroads are entirely in European hands, and the Government refuse to appoint even one Hindu to the Railway Board. The railways lose money year after year, and are helped by the Government out of the revenues of the people. All the loses are borne by the people, all the gains are gathered by the trader.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
3 months 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
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 months 1 week ago
Well, which is the most rational...

Well, which is the most rational theory about these ten millions of species? Is it most likely that there have been ten millions of special creations? or is it most likely that, by continual modifications due to change of circumstances, ten millions of varieties have been produced, as varieties are being produced still?

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 3 weeks ago
The full expression of personality depends...

The full expression of personality depends upon its being inflated by social prestige; it is a social privilege.

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p. 64
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim
1 week ago
A modern theory of knowledge which...

A modern theory of knowledge which takes account of the relational as distinct from the merely relative character of all historical knowledge must start with the assumption that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context. Even a god could not formulate a proposition on historical subjects like 2 x 2 = 4, for what is intelligible in history can be formulated only with reference to problems and conceptual constructions which themselves arise in the flux of historical experience.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 3 weeks ago
We ought neither to fasten our...

We ought neither to fasten our ship to one small anchor nor our life to a single hope.

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Fragment 30 (Oldfather translation)
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 1 week ago
The heroes in paganism correspond exactly...

The heroes in paganism correspond exactly to the saints in popery, and holy dervises in MAHOMETANISM. The place of, HERCULES, THESEUS, HECTOR, ROMULUS, is now supplied by DOMINIC, FRANCIS, ANTHONY, and BENEDICT. Instead of the destruction of monsters, the subduing of tyrants, the defence of our native country; whippings and fastings, cowardice and humility, abject submission and slavish obedience, are become the means of obtaining celestial honours among mankind.

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Part X - With regard to courage or abasement
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
3 months 1 day ago
To eat, teeth must meet. The...

To eat, teeth must meet.

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The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974), p. 66.
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 6 days ago
Suppose a surface to be part...

Suppose a surface to be part red and part blue; so that every point on it is either red or blue, and of course, no part can be both red and blue. What then, is the color of the surface in the immediate neighborhood of the point. ...it follows that the boundary is half red and half blue. In like manner, we find it necessary to hold that consciousness essentially occupies time... Thus, the present is half past and half time to come. ...Take another case: the velocity of a particle at any instant of time is its mean velocity during an infinitesimal instant in which that time is consumed. Just so, my immediate feeling is my feeling through an infinitesimal duration containing the present instant.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
4 months 4 days ago
There is nothing outside…

There is nothing outside the text," which Derrida opponents have characterized to mean that nothing exists but language.

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Il n'y a pas de hors-texte. Of Grammatology (1967). G. Spivak translated this as "
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 day ago
Mahomet can work no miracles; he...

Mahomet can work no miracles; he often answers impatiently: I can work no miracles. I? "I am a Public Preacher;" appointed to preach this doctrine to all creatures. Yet the world, as we can see, had really from of old been all one great miracle to him. Look over the world, says he; is it not wonderful, the work of Allah; wholly "a sign to you," if your eyes were open!

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Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
1 week ago
What are we, weak and blind...

What are we, weak and blind human beings! And what is that flickering light we call Reason? When we have calculated all the probabilities, questioned history, satisfied every doubt and special interest, we may still embrace only a deceptive shadow rather than the truth. What decree has He pronounced on the king, on his dynasty, on his family, on France, and on Europe? Where and when will the troubles end, and by how many misfortunes must we purchase our tranquillity? Is it to build that He has overthrown, or are our hardships to last forever? Alas! A dark cloud hides the future and no eye can penetrate its shadows.

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Chapter VIII, p. 76
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 day ago
Grave talk and grave humor with...

Grave talk and grave humor with the doers of the craft. Building, walling, is an operation that beyond most other manual ones requires incessant consideration - even new invention. I have heard good judges say that he excelled in it all persons they had seen.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 2 days ago
It is not meet to take...

It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.

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15:26 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 2 days ago
All human accomplishment has the same...

All human accomplishment has the same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!

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Henderson the Rain King (1959) [Viking/Penguin, 1984, ISBN 0-140-07269-1], ch. XVIII, p. 271
Philosophical Maxims
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