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Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 6 days ago
The tangible source of exploitation disappears...

The tangible source of exploitation disappears behind the façade of objective rationality.

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p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
3 weeks 4 days ago
It is the fate of 'little...

It is the fate of 'little faiths' of truth that they, true followers of Peter, whether they be Roman or the Protestant observance, cry out and sink in the sea of ideas, where the followers of Paul, believing in the Spirit, walk secure and undismayed.

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p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
And seeing every man is......
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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
The church is in its major...

The church is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy."

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"How The Churches Have Retarded Progress"
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 1 week ago
There are many difficulties impeding the...

There are many difficulties impeding the rapid spread of reasonableness. One of the main difficulties is that it always takes two to make a discussion reasonable. Each of the parties must be ready to learn from the other. You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you.

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Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
1 month 1 week ago
In places where men are used...

In places where men are used to differences they inevitably become tolerant.

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Ch. IV: "The Line of Least Resistance", p. 52
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
4 weeks ago
Why should I not regard this...

Why should I not regard this as desirable-not because the fire, burns me, but because it does not overcome me?

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
The church is a sort of...

The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 43
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 2 weeks ago
Arms are not yet taken up;...

Arms are not yet taken up; but virtually, you are in a civil war. You are not people of differing opinions in a public council;-you are enemies, that must subdue or be subdued, on the one side or the other. If your hands are not on your swords, their knives will be at your throats. There is no medium,-there is no temperament,-there is no compromise with Jacobinism.

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Letter to William Windham (30 December 1794), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.)
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
3 weeks 1 day ago
The Americans' "open-mindedness", which is sometimes...

The Americans' "open-mindedness", which is sometimes cited in their favor, is the other side of their interior formlessness. The same goes for their "individualism". Individualism and personality are not the same: the one belongs to the formless world of quantity, the other to the world of quality and hierarchy. The Americans are the living refutation of the Cartesian axiom, "I think, therefore I am": Americans do not think, yet they are. The American "mind", puerile and primitive, lacks characteristic form and is therefore open to every kind of standardization.

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American "Civilization" (1945) · Excerpts
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 months 4 days 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
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 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
Will Durant
Will Durant
1 month 3 days ago
Life is that which can hold...

Life is that which can hold a purpose for three thousand years and never yield. The individual fails, but life succeeds. The individual is foolish, but life holds in its blood and seed the wisdom of generations. The individual dies, but life, tireless and undiscourageble, goes on, wondering, longing, planning, trying, mounting, longing.

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Ch. 5 : On Death
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 2 weeks ago
Landlords... grow richer, as it were...

Landlords... grow richer, as it were in their sleep, without working, risking, or economizing.

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Book V, Chapter 1, Section 5
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 4 weeks ago
Dadaism and surrealism ... represented the...

Dadaism and surrealism ... represented the intoxication of total license, the intoxication in which the mind wallows when it has made a clean sweep of value and surrendered to the immediate. The good is the pole towards which the human spirit is necessarily oriented, not only in action but in every effort, including the effort of pure intelligence. The surrealists have set up non-oriented thought as a model; they have chosen the total absence of value as their supreme value. Men have always been intoxicated by license, which is why, throughout history, towns have been sacked. But there has not always been a literary equivalent for the sacking of towns. Surrealism is such an equivalent.

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"The responsibility of writers," p. 167
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 2 weeks ago
We are at war with a...

We are at war with a system, which, by it's essence, is inimical to all other Governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by it's essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country. To us it is a Colossus which bestrides our channel. It has one foot on a foreign shore, the other upon the British soil. Thus advantaged, if it can at all exist, it must finally prevail.

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p. 19
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 2 weeks ago
To affirm that humans thrive in...

To affirm that humans thrive in many different ways is not to deny that there are universal human values. Nor is it to reject the claim that there should be universal human rights. It is to deny that universal values can only be fully realized in a universal regime. Human rights can be respected in a variety of regimes, liberal and otherwise. Universal human rights are not an ideal constitution for a single regime throughout the world, but a set of minimum standards for peaceful coexistence among regimes that will always remain different.

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Two Faces of Liberalism (New Press, 2000, ISBN 0-745-62259-3. 168 pages), ch. 1: Liberal Toleration (p. 21)
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 1 week ago
Christian Apocalyptic offers us no such...

Christian Apocalyptic offers us no such hope. It does not even foretell, (which would be more tolerable to our habits of thought) a gradual decay. It foretells a sudden, violent end imposed from without; an extinguisher popped onto the candle, a brick flung at the gramophone, a curtain rung down on the play - "Halt!"

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Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
1 month 6 days ago
It seems to us that the...

It seems to us that the past is our property. Well, on the contrary - we are its property, because we are not able to make changes in it, while it fills the whole of our existence.

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Original: "Otóż przeciwnie - to my jesteśmy jej własnością, ponieważ nie jesteśmy w stanie dokonać w niej zmian, ona natomiast wypełnia całość naszego istnienia." Klucz niebieski albo opowieści biblijne zebrane ku pouczeniu i przestrodze
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 5 days ago
With stupidity and sound digestion man...

With stupidity and sound digestion man may front much.

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Bk. II, ch. 4.
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
4 weeks ago
Perhaps its destruction has been brought...

Perhaps its destruction has been brought about only that it may be raised up again to a better destiny. Oftentimes a reverse has but made room for more prosperous fortune. Many structures have fallen only to rise to a greater height.

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Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
1 month 3 days ago
It is life that educates, and...

It is life that educates, and perhaps love more than anything else in life.

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Ch. 2 : On Youth
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 3 weeks ago
This misplacing hath caused a deficience,...

This misplacing hath caused a deficience, or at least a great improficience in the sciences themselves. For the handling of final causes, mixed with the rest in physical inquiries, hath intercepted the severe and diligent inquiry of all real and physical causes, and given men the occasion to stay upon these satisfactory and specious causes, to the great arrest and prejudice of further discovery. For this I find done not only by Plato, who ever anchoreth upon that shore, but by Aristotle, Galen, and others which do usually likewise fall upon these flats of discoursing causes.

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Book VII, 7
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 2 weeks ago
In ancient Europe, Stoics asserted that...

In ancient Europe, Stoics asserted that a slave could be freer than a master who suffers from self-division. In China, Daoists imagined a type of sage who responded to the flow of events without weighing alternatives. Disciples of monotheistic faiths have believed something similar: freedom, they say, is obeying God's will. What those who follow these traditions want most is not any kind of freedom of choice. Instead, what they long for is freedom from choice.

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The Faith of Puppets: The Freedom of the Marionette (p. 6-7)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
Nothing is so wearing as the...

Nothing is so wearing as the possession or abuse of liberty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 months 1 week ago
Many counterrevolutionary books have been written...

Many counterrevolutionary books have been written in favor of the Revolution. But Burke has written a revolutionary book against the Revolution.

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Fragment No. 104; on Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 1 week ago
The word "God," so "capitalised" (as...

The word "God," so "capitalised" (as we Americans say), is the definable proper name, signifying Ens necessarium; in my belief Really creator of all three Universes of Experience. I, Ens necessarium is a latin expression which signifies "Necessary being, necessary entity"

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 1 week ago
Giving alms is only a virtuous...

Giving alms is only a virtuous deed when you give money that you yourself worked to get.

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p. 83
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 1 week ago
It is ...easy to be certain....

It is ...easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague.

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Vol. IV, par. 237
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
5 months 2 days ago
Now what has been said about...

Now what has been said about the Jews is also to be understood about Cahorsins, and anyone else depending upon the depravity of usury.

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art. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 4 weeks ago
The collective is the object of...

The collective is the object of all idolatry, this it is which chains us to the earth. In the case of avarice: gold is of the social order. In the case of ambition: power is of the social order. Science and art are full of the social element also. And love? Love is more or less of an exception: that is why we can go to God through love, not through avarice and ambition.

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p. 121
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 6 days ago
Power as is really divided, and...

Power as is really divided, and as dangerously to all purposes, by sharing with another an Indirect Power, as a Direct one.

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The Third Part, Chapter 42, p. 315
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 1 week ago
Kierkegaard was by far the most...

Kierkegaard was by far the most profound thinker of the last century. Kierkegaard was a saint.

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As quoted in "Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard on the ethico-religious" by Roe Fremstedal in Ideas in History Vol. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
4 months 4 days ago
He who intends to enjoy life...

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

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Philosophical Maxims
Empedocles
Empedocles
4 months 3 days ago
What needs saying…

What needs saying is worth saying twice.

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fr. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 months 1 week ago
The true philosophical Act is annihilation...

The true philosophical Act is annihilation of self (Selbsttodtung); this is the real beginning of all Philosophy; all requisites for being a Disciple of Philosophy point hither. This Act alone corresponds to all the conditions and characteristics of transcendental conduct.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 2 weeks ago
It seldom happens, however, that a...

It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver.

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Chapter IV, p. 420.
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 1 week ago
In fact writing a computer program...

In fact writing a computer program is a pretty good way to summarize knowledge about any set of rules.

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Chapter 2, "Silken Fetters" (p. 58)
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 months 1 week ago
We have a priori reasons for...

We have a priori reasons for believing that in every sentence there is some one order of words more effective than any other; and that this order is the one which presents the elements of the proposition in the succession in which they may be most readily put together.

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Pt. I, sec. 3, "The Principle of Economy Applied to Sentences"
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 2 weeks ago
Nature has pointed out a mixed...

Nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most suitable to the human race, and secretly admonished them to allow none of these biases to draw too much, so as to incapacitate them for other occupations and entertainments. Indulge your passion for science, says she, but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy which they introduce, by the endless uncertainty in which they involve you, and by the cold reception which your pretended discoveries shall meet with, when communicated. Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.

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Section 1 : Of The Different Species of Philosophy
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
This is the value of the...

This is the value of the Communities; not what they have done, but the revolution which they indicate as on the way.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 2 weeks ago
Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 weeks ago
Freedom of person, securing every one...

Freedom of person, securing every one from imprisonment, or other bodily restraint, but by the laws of the land. This is effected by the well-known law of habeas corpus.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 3 weeks ago
We are wont to call that...

We are wont to call that human reasoning which we apply to Nature the anticipation of Nature (as being rash and premature) and that which is properly deduced from things the interpretation of Nature.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 months 2 days ago
It may be that the public...

It may be that the public mind of India may expand under our system till it has outgrown that system; that by good government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government, that, having become instructed in European knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand European institutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. But never will I attempt to avert or to retard it. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English history.

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Speech in the House of Commons
Philosophical Maxims
Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan
1 month 1 week ago
A Muslim who knows French will...

A Muslim who knows French will never be a dangerous Muslim.

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quoted in Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.'(107)
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 months 4 weeks ago
The dressing up and puffing up...

The dressing up and puffing up of the individual erases the lineaments of protest.

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p. 283
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 4 days ago
The mass-man sees in the State...

The mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own. Suppose that in the public life of a country some difficulty, conflict, or problem presents itself, the mass-man will tend to demand that the State intervene immediately and undertake a solution directly with its immense and unassailable resources. This is the gravest danger that to-day threatens civilisation: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State.

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Chapter XIII: The Greatest Danger, The State
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
I know. I know that I...

I know. I know that I shall never again meet anything or anybody who will inspire me with passion. You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it. I know I'll never jump again.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 2 weeks ago
Man is a goal-seeking animal. His...

Man is a goal-seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for goals.

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Philosophical Maxims
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