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Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 3 days ago
Besides, we should never attempt to...

Besides, we should never attempt to balance anybody's misery against somebody else's happiness.

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pp. 486-487
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
4 months 3 weeks ago
Lifetime is a child at play,...

Lifetime is a child at play, moving pieces in a game.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 1 week ago
A penny saved is of more...

A penny saved is of more value than a penny paid out.

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What Luther Says, Section on "Life, Human," No. 2438. Rules for a Thrifty Life. 2, p. 784
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 2 weeks ago
We do not require elaborate training...

We do not require elaborate training merely in order to refrain from embarking upon intricate trains of inference. Such abstinence is only too easy.

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Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect (1927).
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 5 days ago
Fire is the best of servents;...

Fire is the best of servents; but what a master!

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Bk. II, ch. 9.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 6 days ago
The good life, as I conceive...

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy; I mean that if you are happy you will be good.

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Part I: Man and Nature, Ch. 1: Current Perplexities, p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 3 weeks ago
O faithless and perverse generation, how...

O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me.

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17:17 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 days ago
This avidity alone...
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St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 2 weeks ago
The confession of evil works is...

The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.

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Tractates on the Gospel of John; tractate XII on John 3:6-21, and 13
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 3 weeks ago
Suffering is a spiritual thing. It...

Suffering is a spiritual thing. It is the most immediate revelation of consciousness, and it may be that our body was given us simply in order that suffering might be enabled to manifest itself. A man who had never known suffering, either in greater or less degree, would scarcely possess consciousness of himself. The child first cries at birth when the air, entering into his lungs and limiting him, seems to say to him: You have to breathe me in order to live!

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 5 days ago
That chastity of honour which felt...

That chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound.

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Volume iii, p. 332
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 4 days ago
The most difficult subjects can be...

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

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Chapter III, Christianity Misunderstood by Believers
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 day ago
When you wake up…

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. (Hays translation) Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today inquisitive, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill.

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II, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 5 days ago
It is high time that Communists...

It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.

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Preamble, paragraph 3.
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 4 days ago
The Ideal Man of the eighteenth...

The Ideal Man of the eighteenth century was the Rationalist; of the seventeenth, the Christian Stoic; of the Renaissance, the Free Individual; of the Middle Ages, the Contemplative Saint. And what is our Ideal Man? On what grand and luminous mythological figure does contemporary humanity attempt to model itself? The question is embarrassing. Nobody knows. And, in spite of all the laudable efforts of the Institute for Intellectual Co-operation to fabricate an acceptable Ideal Man for the use of Ministers of Education, nobody, I suspect, will know until such time as a major poet appears upon the scene with the unmistakable revelation. Meanwhile, one must be content to go on piping up for reason and realism and a certain decency.

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p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
5 days ago
Only now, as we feel the...

Only now, as we feel the onslaught behind us, do we begin dimly to apprehend why the animals fought, begot, and died; and behind them the plants; and behind these the huge reserve of inorganic forces. We are moved by pity, gratitude, and esteem for our old comrades-in-arms. They toiled, loved, and died to open a road for our coming. We also toil with the same delight, agony, and exaltation for the sake of Someone Else who with every courageous deed of ours proceeds one step farther. All our struggle once more will have a purpose much greater than we, wherein our toils, our miseries, and our crimes will have become useful and holy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Étienne de La Boétie
Étienne de La Boétie
1 month ago
From all these indignities….

From all these indignities, such as the very beasts of the field would not endure, you can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
5 days ago
When, in the Course of human...

When, in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 2 days ago
Certain success evicts one from the...

Certain success evicts one from the paradise of winning against the odds.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 1 day ago
Some minds will jump here jump...

Some minds will jump here jump to the conclusion that a past idea cannot in any sense be present. But that is hasty and illogical. How extravagant too, to pronounce our whole knowledge of the past to be mere delusion! Yet it would seem that the past is completely beyond the bounds of possible experience as a Kantian thing-in-itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
4 weeks 1 day ago
Is the position tenable, that certain...

Is the position tenable, that certain phenomena, possible in Euclidean space, would be impossible in non-Euclidean space, so that experience, in establishing these phenomena, would directly contradict the non-Euclidean hypothesis? For my part I think no such question can be put. To my mind it is precisely equivalent to the following, whose absurdity is patent to all eyes: are there lengths expressible in meters and centimeters, but which can not be measured in fathoms, feet, and inches, so that experience, in ascertaining the existence of these lengths, would directly contradict the hypothesis that there are fathoms divided into six feet?

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Ch. V: Experiment and Geometry (1905) Tr. George Bruce Halstead
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 2 weeks ago
Woman, compared to other creatures, is...

Woman, compared to other creatures, is the image of God, for she bears dominion over them. But compared unto man, she may not be called the image of God, for she bears not rule and lordship over man, but ought to obey him. The woman shall be subject to man as unto Christ. For woman, has not her example from the body and from the flesh, that so she shall be subject to man, as the flesh is unto the Spirit, because that the flesh in the weakness and mortality of this life lusts and strives against the Spirit, and therefore would not the Holy Ghost give example of subjection to the woman of any such thing.

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As quoted by John Knox The First Blast to Awaken Women Degenerate (1558)
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
2 months 2 weeks ago
The family uses people, not for...

The family uses people, not for what they are, nor for what they are intended to be, but for what it wants them for - its own uses. It thinks of them not as what God has made them, but as the something which it has arranged that they shall be.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 1 week ago
It is not without good reason...

It is not without good reason said, that he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying.

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Ch. 9. Of Liars, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Of practical wisdom these are the...

Of practical wisdom these are the three fruits: to deliberate well, to speak to the point, to do what is right.

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Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
2 months 2 weeks ago
The more Lil' Kim distorted her...

The more Lil' Kim distorted her natural beauty to become a cartoonlike caricature of whiteness, the larger her success.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 3 weeks ago
With men this is impossible; but...

With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.

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19:26 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 3 weeks ago
Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps...

Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps over the carpets of Aristippus. The cynic pullulated at every corner, and in the highest places. This cynic did nothing but saboter the civilisation of the time. He was the nihilist of Hellenism. He created nothing, he made nothing. His role was to undo - or rather to attempt to undo, for he did not succeed in his purpose. The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. What would become of the cynic among a savage people where everyone, naturally and quite seriously, fulfils what the cynic farcically considers to be his personal role?

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Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 2 weeks ago
Nobody should ever doubt that in...

Nobody should ever doubt that in the washing of rebirth (Titus 3:5) absolutely all sins, from the least to the greatest, are altogether forgiven.

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229E:2
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
4 days ago
Among the foundations of the Higher...

Among the foundations of the Higher Mathematics is also the 'Idea of a Limit'. The Idea of a Limit cannot be superseded by any other definitions or Hypotheses.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 1 week ago
In democratic ages men rarely sacrifice...

In democratic ages men rarely sacrifice themselves for another, but they show a general compassion for all the human race. One never sees them inflict pointless suffering, and they are glad to relieve the sorrows of others when they can do so without much trouble to themselves. They are not disinterested, but they are gentle.

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Book Three, Chapter I.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 days ago
We now live in a technologically...

We now live in a technologically prepared environment that blankets the earth itself. The humanly contrived environment of electric information and power has begun to take precedence over the old environment of "nature." Nature, as it were, begins to be the content of our technology.

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p. 276
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
5 days ago
I am not the light, I...

I am not the light, I am the night; but a flame stabs through my entrails and consumes me. I am the night devoured by light.

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Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months 2 weeks ago
Man's biological weakness is the condition...

Man's biological weakness is the condition of human culture.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
2 months 2 weeks ago
Suffering, sad "female humanity!" What are...

Suffering, sad "female humanity!" What are these feelings which they are taught to consider as disgraceful, to deny to themselves? What form do the Chinese feet assume when denied their proper development? If the young girls of the "higher classes," who never commit a false step, whose justly earned reputations were never sullied even by the stain which the fruit of mere "knowledge of good and evil" leaves behind, were to speak, and say what are their thoughts employed upon, their thoughts, which alone are free, what would they say?

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 1 week ago
When the profits of trade happen...

When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, over-trading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers.

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Chapter I, p. 469.
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 5 days ago
... people only count their misfortunes;...

... people only count their misfortunes; their good luck they take no account of. But if they were to take everything into account, as they should, they'd find that they had their fair share of it.

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Part 2, Chapter 6 (tr. ?)
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
5 months 2 days ago
Of these not right forms of...

Of these not right forms of government, monarchy, when bound by good written rules, which we call laws, is the best of all the six; but without law it is hard and most oppressive to live with. The government of the few must be considered intermediate, both in good and in evil. The government of the multitude is weak in all respects and able to do nothing great, either good or bad, when compared with the other forms of government, therefore of all these governments when they are lawful, this is the worst, and when they are all lawless it is the best.

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Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
4 weeks 1 day ago
To this end they make a...

To this end they make a shield of their hypocritical zeal for religion. They go about invoking the Bible, which they would have minister to their deceitful purposes. Contrary to the sense of the Bible and the intention of the holy Fathers, if I am not mistaken, they would extend such authorities until even in purely physical matters - where faith is not involved - they would have us altogether abandon reason and the evidence of our senses in favor of some biblical passage, though under the surface meaning of its words this passage may contain a different sense.

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Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
2 weeks 5 days ago
In the four quarters of the...

In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? Or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to American physicians or surgeons? What new substances have their chemists discovered? Or what old ones have they advanced? What new constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans? Who drinks out of American glasses? Or eats from American plates? Or wears American coats or gowns? or sleeps in American blankets? Finally, under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy and sell and torture?

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Referring to the lack of established culture and the established institution of slavery in the United States, in "Review of Seybert's Annals of the United States", The Edinburgh Review (1820), pp. 79-80
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 1 week ago
The will is not free to...

The will is not free to strive toward whatever is declared good.

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Thesis 10
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 2 weeks ago
Honor Wisdom; and deny it not...

Honor Wisdom; and deny it not to them that would learn; and shew it unto them that dispraise it! Sow not the sea fields!

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 3 weeks ago
When you wish to instruct…

When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds may take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.

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Lines 335-337; Edward Charles Wickham translation
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 2 days ago
Junz found revulsion growing strong within...

Junz found revulsion growing strong within him. A planet full of people meant nothing against the dictates of economic necessity!

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 4 days ago
What we really need the poet's...

What we really need the poet's and orator's help to keep alive in us is not, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed when he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more lonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in the glorious Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes of the Fifty-fourth. That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it in times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of nations should most of all be reared.

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Robert Gould Shaw: Oration upon the Unveiling of the Shaw Monument, 31 May 1897
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months 2 weeks ago
I must also call your attention...

I must also call your attention to the fact that it is crucial for my viewpoint that human behavior is to a large extent charged with a considerable amount of energy, but that in contrast to Freud I do not consider this energy to be sexual, but the vital energy within any organism which, according to biological laws, gives man the desire to live, and that means to adapt himself to the social necessities of his society. To go back to what I consider to be the misunderstanding, it has never been my position that society only deforms or manifests that which is already there. If we make the distinction between human necessities in general and human desires in particular then indeed, society creates particular desires which, however, follow the general laws of the necessities rooted in human nature.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 3 days ago
Man is always separated from what...

Man is always separated from what he is by all the breadth of the being which he is not. He makes himself known to himself from the other side of the world and he looks from the horizon toward himself to recover his inner being.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 3 weeks ago
Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance...

Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right, and toleration of movements from the Left.

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An Essay on Liberation Beacon Press, 1969, p. 109
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
2 weeks 2 days ago
Now, you see, if you understand...

Now, you see, if you understand what I'm saying, with your intelligence, and then take the next step and say "But I understood it now, but I didn't feel it." Then, next I raise the question: Why do you want to feel it? You say: "I want something more", because that's again that spiritual greed. And you could only say that because you didn't understand it.

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Intellectual Yoga
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 day ago
The more intense a spiritual leader's...

The more intense a spiritual leader's appetite for power, the more he is concerned to limit it to others.

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Philosophical Maxims
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