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Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 weeks ago
We are no longer instinctively driven...

We are no longer instinctively driven to apprehend, and lay to heart, what is Good and Lovely, but rather to inquire, as onlookers, how it is produced, whence it comes, whither it goes. Our favourite Philosophers have no love and no hatred; they stand among us not to do, nor to create anything, but as a sort of Logic mills, to grind out the true causes and effects of all that is done and created.

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Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
6 months 2 weeks ago
The best people renounce all for...

The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle. For what sense or understanding have they? They follow minstrels and take the multitude for a teacher, not knowing that many are bad and few good. For the best men choose one thing above all immortal glory among mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 1 day ago
The march of the human mind...

The march of the human mind is slow.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 4 weeks ago
Mass man is a phenomenon of...

Mass man is a phenomenon of electric speed, not of physical quantity.

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Access, Issues 165-176, National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting, 1984, p. xxiii
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
4 months 3 weeks ago
Religion in its humility restores man...

Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months ago
Louisiana, as ceded by France to...

Louisiana, as ceded by France to the United States, is made a part of the United States; its white inhabitants shall be citizens, and stand, as to their rights and obligations, on the same footing with other citizens of the United States, in analogous situations.

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Draft of proposed Amendment to the Constitution by Jefferson, who thought an amendment would be necessary to authorize the Louisiana Purchase to be incorporated into the United States
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
4 months 1 week ago
The STATE IDEA, the authoritarian principle,...

The STATE IDEA, the authoritarian principle, has been proven bankrupt by the experience of the Russian Revolution. If I were to sum up my whole argument in one sentence I should say: The inherent tendency of the State is to concentrate, to narrow, and monopolize all social activities; the nature of revolution is, on the contrary, to grow, to broaden, and disseminate itself in ever-wider circles. In other words, the State is institutional and static; revolution is fluent, dynamic. These two tendencies are incompatible and mutually destructive. The State idea killed the Russian Revolution and it must have the same result in all other revolutions, unless the libertarian idea prevail.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
6 months 2 days ago
We hold, that the moral obligation...

We hold, that the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty, is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance, ambition and intrigue.

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Address and Declaration at a Select Meeting of the Friends of Universal Peace and Liberty (August 20, 1791) p. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 3 weeks ago
The 'Enlightenment', which discovered the liberties,...

The 'Enlightenment', which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
3 months 1 week ago
There is no more consensus on...

There is no more consensus on what justice means than there is on the character of the good. If anything, there is less. Among the virtues, justice is one of the most shaped by convention. For that reason it is among the most changeable.

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'Modus Vivendi' (p.34)
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
4 months 1 week ago
If we accept values as given...

If we accept values as given and consistent, if we postulate an objective description of the world as it really is, and if we assume that the decision maker's computational powers are unlimited, then two important consequences follow. First, we do not need to distinguish between the real world and the decision maker's perception of it: he or she perceives the world as it really is. Second, we can predict the choices that will be made by a rational decision maker entirely from our knowledge of the real world and without a knowledge of the decision maker's perceptions or modes of calculation. (We do, of course, have to know his or her utility function.)

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5 months 1 day ago
A gentleman, even if he loses...

A gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 3 weeks ago
To be or not to be...Neither...

To be or not to be...Neither one nor the other.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 2 weeks ago
Man is a substantial....
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Main Content / General
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 1 day ago
I take toleration to be a...

I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.

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Speech on the Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
2 months 3 weeks ago
What postulate do we implicitly admit?...

What postulate do we implicitly admit? It is that the duration of two identical phenomena is the same; or... that the same causes take the same time to produce the same effects. ...Is it impossible that experiment may some day contradict our postulate?

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
7 months 1 day ago
Be attentive therefore, according to the...

Be attentive therefore, according to the instruction of the Gospel, to learn obedience from the lily and the bird. Be not affrighted, do no despair, when thou comparest thy life with these teachers. There is nothing to despair about, for indeed thou shalt learn from them; and the Gospel first comforts thee by telling thee that God is the God of patience, and then it adds: 'Thou shalt learn from the lilies and the birds, learn to be absolutely obedient like the lilies and the birds, learn not to serve two masters; for no man can serve two masters, he must either ... or.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5 months 1 day ago
Paper, they say, does not blush,...

Paper, they say, does not blush, but I assure you it's not true and that it's blushing just as I am now, all over.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months ago
To preserve the freedom of the...

To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement. The generation which is going off the stage has deserved well of mankind for the struggles it has made, and for having arrested the course of despotism which had overwhelmed the world for thousands and thousands of years. If there seems to be danger that the ground they have gained will be lost again, that danger comes from the generation your contemporary. But that the enthusiasm which characterizes youth should lift its parricide hands against freedom and science would be such a monstrous phenomenon as I cannot place among possible things in this age and country.

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Letter to William Green Mumford
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
6 months 1 day ago
In the "fulfillment" of both the...

In the "fulfillment" of both the laws and duty, ... the moral disposition ceases to be the universal, opposed to inclination, and inclination ceases to be particular, opposed to the law.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
5 months 5 days ago
The blood of Jesus Christ can...

The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
2 months 3 weeks ago
Before a man can do things...

Before a man can do things there must be things he will not do.

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Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (IVP, 1980), Ch 2
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 2 weeks ago
A young man should serve...

A young man should serve his parents at home and be respectful to elders outside his home. He should be earnest and truthful, loving all, but become intimate with humaneness. After doing this, if he has energy to spare, he can study literature and the arts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
6 months 1 week ago
The human being, corrupted to the...

The human being, corrupted to the root, can neither desire nor perform anything but evil.

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The Making of Martin Luther, By Richard Rex, p66
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months ago
I read no newspaper now but...

I read no newspaper now but Ritchie's, and in that chiefly the advertisments, for they contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

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Letter to Nathaniel Macon
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
6 months 1 day ago
The creed which accepts as the...

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
6 months 4 days ago
The heights of popularity and patriotism...

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny ; flattery to treachery ; standing armies to arbitrary government ; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.

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Part I, Essay 8: Of Public Credit (This appears as a footnote in editions H to P. Other editions include it in the body of the text, and some number it Essay 9.)
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
5 months 2 weeks ago
You may drive out….

You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she still will hurry back.

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Book I, epistle x, line 24
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
5 months 3 weeks ago
Someone who knows too much finds...

Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.

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p. 64e
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 3 weeks ago
While the intellectual space.....

While the intellectual space does contain universal ideas, definitions, those definitions are detailed a posteriori. Truth corresponds with reality at a minimum. 

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 4 weeks ago
Scientific theories can always be improved...

Scientific theories can always be improved and are improved. That is one of the glories of science. It is the authoritarian view of the Universe that is frozen in stone and cannot be changed, so that once it is wrong, it is wrong forever.

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Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
4 months 2 weeks ago
Christians are beginning to lose the...

Christians are beginning to lose the spirit of intolerance which animated them: experience has shown the error of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and of the persecution of those Christians in France whose belief differed a little from that of the king. They have realized that zeal for the advancement of religion is different from a due attachment to it; and that in order to love it and fulfill its behests, it is not necessary to hate and persecute those who are opposed to it.

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No. 60. (Usbek writing to Ibben)
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 1 day ago
Each piece of money is a...

Each piece of money is a mere coin, or means of circulation, only so long as it actually circulates.

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Vol. I, Ch. 3, Section 2(c), pg. 145.
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
3 months 3 weeks ago
In 1970s Britain, conservative philosophy was...

In 1970s Britain, conservative philosophy was the preoccupation of a few half-mad recluses.

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"Why I became a conservative," The New Criterion
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
6 months 1 day ago
I will not talk about people...

I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism. Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.

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p. 484
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 weeks ago
Cannot we understand how these men...

Cannot we understand how these men worshipped Canopus; became what we call Sabeans, worshipping the stars? Such is to me the secret of all forms of Paganism. Worship is transcendent wonder; wonder for which there is now no limit or measure; that is worship.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
4 months 3 weeks ago
Life, in that it is life,...

Life, in that it is life, necessarily entails justice.

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"Politics and Morality" in Be'ayot (April 1945), as published in A Land of Two Peoples : Martin Buber on Jews and Arabs (1983) edited by Paul Mendes-Flohr, p. 169
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
5 months 2 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
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5 months 1 day ago
Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind...

Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.

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Book II, ch. 4 (trans. Constance Garnett) The Elder Zossima, speaking to Mrs. Khoklakov
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
5 months 3 weeks ago
This book, admirable in so many...

This book, admirable in so many respects, power in its break and style, is even more intimidating for me in that, having formely had the good fortune to study under Michel Foucault, I retain the consciousness of an admiring and grateful disciple. Now, the disciple's consciousness, when he starts, I would not say to dispute, but to engage in dialogue with the master or, better, to articulate the interminable and silent dialogue which made him into a disciple-this disciple's consciousness is an unhappy consciousness.

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Cogito and The History of Madness (Routledge classics edition)
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 3 weeks ago
Propaganda...

Propaganda:

Good = God (take a letter)
Evil = Devil (add a letter)

😁🚀📖

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 1 day ago
The executive of the modern State...

The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

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As quoted in the Communist Manifesto (1848) p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
4 months 3 weeks ago
Marx explains the alienation of labor...

Marx explains the alienation of labor as exemplified in, first, the relation of the worker to the product of his labor and, second, the relation of the worker to his own activity. P. 276

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Philosophical Maxims
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman
3 months 3 weeks ago
On members of the Nazi Party...

[On members of the Nazi Party] The most shocking, but also important thing, is they were not the uneducated masses. The majority had academic degrees. We like to think that education provides immunity to racist and fascist ideology. And it doesn't.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
6 months 1 day ago
The only government that I recognize-and...

The only government that I recognize-and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army - is that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 2 weeks ago
"It is nothing-a trifling matter at...

"It is nothing-a trifling matter at most; keep a stout heart and it will soon cease"; then in thinking it slight, you will make it slight. Everything depends on opinion; ambition, luxury, greed, hark back to opinion. It is according to opinion that we suffer.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
7 months 1 day ago
Dogmatics must be designed in this...

Dogmatics must be designed in this way. Above all, every science must vigorously lay hold of its own beginning and not live in complicated relations with other sciences. If dogmatics begins by wanting to explain sinfulness or by wanting to prove its actuality, no dogmatics will come out of it, but the entire existence of dogmatics will become problematic and vague.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 2 weeks ago
If we want a love which...

If we want a love which will protect the soul from wounds we must love something other than God.

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p. 62
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 4 weeks ago
First, there must be an end...

First, there must be an end to war and national rivalry and only then could one turn to the internal miseries that, after all, had external conflict as their chief cause.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
2 months 1 week ago
There is a word very commonly...

There is a word very commonly used these days: "anti-communism." It's a very stupid word, badly put together. It makes it appear as though communism were something original, something basic, something fundamental. Therefore, it is taken as the point of departure, and anti-communism is defined in relation to communism. Here is why I say that this word was poorly selected, that it was put together by people who do not understand etymology: the primary, the eternal concept is humanity. And communism is anti-humanity. Whoever says "anti-communism" is saying, in effect, anti-anti-humanity. A poor construction. So we should say: that which is against communism is for humanity. Not to accept, to reject this inhuman Communist ideology is simply to be a human being. It isn't being a member of a party.

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Speech in Washington D.C. (30 June 1975), published in Solzhenitsyn: The Voice of Freedom (1975), p. 30
Philosophical Maxims
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