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John Locke
John Locke
4 months 3 weeks ago
And because it may be too...

And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage...

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Second Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. XII, sec. 143
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
3 months 2 weeks ago
I am myself deeply convinced that...

I am myself deeply convinced that imagination is the basis of a sound reason. It is by dint of feeling, and of putting ourselves in fancy into the place of other men, that we can learn how we ought to treat them, and be moved to treat them as we ought. Man, to express the thing in familiar language, is a complex being, made up of a head and a heart. So far as we are employed in heaping up facts and in reasoning upon them merely, we are a species of machine; it is our impulses and our sentiments, that are the glory of our nature.

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Of Religion (1818), quoted in Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin, Volume 7: Religious Writings, ed. Mark Philp
Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
1 month 2 weeks ago
The man who says that the...

The man who says that the world is a machine has really advanced no further than to say that he is so well satisfied with the analogy that he is through with searching any further.

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Ch. VI: "The Drama of Destiny", §5, p. 130.
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Did ye never read in the...

Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.

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21:27-42 and 44 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
5 months ago
Cunning and deceit will every time...

Cunning and deceit will every time serve a man better than force to rise from a base condition to great fortune.

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Book 2, Ch. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Henry George
Henry George
3 weeks ago
Why should charity be offered the...

Why should charity be offered the unemployed? It is not alms they ask. They are insulted and embittered and degraded by being forced to accept as paupers what they would gladly earn as workers. What they ask is not charity, but the opportunity to use their own labor in satisfying their own wants. Why can they not have that? It is their natural right. He who made food and clothing and shelter necessary to man's life has also given to man, in the power of labor, the means of maintaining that life; and when, without fault of their own, men cannot exert that power, there is somewhere a wrong of the same kind as denial of the right of property and denial of the right of life - a wrong equivalent to robbery and murder on the grandest scale. Charity can only palliate present suffering a little at the risk of fatal disease. For charity cannot right a wrong; only justice can do that. Charity is false, futile, and poisonous when offered as a substitute for justice.

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p. 179
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 2 weeks ago
Our blight is ideologies - they...

Our blight is ideologies - they are the long-expected Antichrist!

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The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 3 weeks ago
We are taught to believe that...

We are taught to believe that a desire of domineering over our countrymen is love to our country; and those who hate civil war abet rebellion, and that the amiable and conciliatory virtues of lenity, moderation, and tenderness to the privileges of those who depend on this kingdom are a sort of treason to the state. It is impossible that we should remain long in a situation, which breeds such notions and dispositions, without some great alteration in the national character.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Get thee hence, Satan: for it...

Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

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4:10 (KJV) Said to Satan.
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 4 days ago
Evil destroyeth itself.

Evil destroyeth itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 1 week ago
Our reverence for the nobility of...

Our reverence for the nobility of manhood will not be lessened by the knowledge, that Man, is in substance and in structure, one with the brutes; for, he alone possesses the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech, whereby, in the secular period of his existence, he has slowly accumulated and organized the experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessation of every individual life in other animals; so that now he stands raised upon it as on a mountain top, far above the level of his humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting, here and there, a ray from the infinite source of truth.

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Ch.2, p. 132
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
The true hero fights and dies...

The true hero fights and dies in the name of his destiny, and not in the name of a belief.

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Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
3 months 2 weeks ago
The illustrious archbishop of Cambray was...

The illustrious archbishop of Cambray was of more worth than his chambermaid, and there are few of us that would hesitate to pronounce, if his palace were in flames, and the life of only one of them could be preserved, which of the two ought to be preferred ... Supposing the chambermaid had been my wife, my mother or my benefactor. This would not alter the truth of the proposition. The life of Fenelon would still be more valuable than that of the chambermaid; and justice, pure, unadulterated justice, would still have preferred that which was most valuable. Justice would have taught me to save the life of Fenelon at the expence of the other. What magic is there in the pronoun "my", to overturn the decisions of everlasting truth?

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Vol.1, bk. 2, ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 months 3 weeks ago
Each new ontological theory, propounded in...

Each new ontological theory, propounded in lieu of previous ones shown to be untenable, has been followed by a new criticism leading to a new scepticism. All possible conceptions have been one by one tried and found wanting; and so the entire field of speculation has been gradually exhausted without positive result: the only result reached being the negative one above stated, that the reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown.

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Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. IV, The Relativity of All Knowledge
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 2 weeks ago
There are as many nights as...

There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word "happy" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

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"The Art of Living", interview with journalist Gordon Young first published in 1960
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months ago
I know that a Christian should...

I know that a Christian should be humble, but against the Pope I am going to be proud and say to him: "You, Pope, I will not have you for my boss, for I am sure that my doctrine is divine."

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Chapter 2, Verse 6
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
To act is to anchor in...

To act is to anchor in the imminent future.

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Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
2 months 3 weeks ago
The big advantage of being a...

The big advantage of being a chemistry major was the freedom to be tasteless.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 5 days ago
The other reason is that what...

The other reason is that what happens to the individual is a cause of well-being in what directs the world--of its well-being, its fulfillment, or its very existence, even. Because the whole is damaged if you cut away anything--anything at all--from its continuity and its coherence. Not only its parts, but its purposes. And that's what you're doing when you complain: hacking and destroying.

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(Hays translation) V, 7
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 1 day ago
[H]uman nature as encoded in our...

[H]uman nature as encoded in our DNA isn't immutable. Mankind's barbaric track-record to date is an unreliable guide to the future. If Homo sapiens' nastier alleles and their more sinister combinations can be silenced or edited out of the genome, and new improved code-sequences inserted instead, then the pessimists will be confounded. A major discontinuity in the development of life lies ahead. Providentially, we've learned that the DNA-driven world isn't written in God-given proprietary code it would be hubris to tamper with, but in bug-ridden open source amenable to improvement.

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Utopian Pharmacology: Mental Health in the Third Millennium MDMA and Beyond, BLTC Research, last updated 2020
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
Consider, for example, the state of...

Consider, for example, the state of Science generally, in Europe, at this period. It is admitted, on all sides, that the Metaphysical and Moral Sciences are falling into decay, while the Physical are engrossing, every day, more respect and attention. In most of the European nations there is now no such thing as a Science of Mind; only more or less advancement in the general science, or the special sciences, of matter.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 5 days ago
Think not so much of what...

Think not so much of what thou hast not as of what thou hast: but of the things which thou hast, select the best, and then reflect how eagerly they would have been sought, if thou hadst them not. At the same time, however, take care that thou dost not, through being so pleased with them, accustom thyself to overvalue them, so as to be disturbed if ever thou shouldst not have them.

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Variant Translation: Let not thy mind run on what thou lackest as much as on what thou hast already. VII, 27
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
1 month 1 week ago
With competition is connected less the...

With competition is connected less the intention to do the thing best than the intention to make it as profitable, as productive, as possible. Hence people study to get into the civil service (study in order to get a well-paid job), study cringing and flattery, routine and 'acquaintance with business', work 'for appearance'. Hence, while it is apparently a matter of doing 'good service', in truth only a 'good business' and earning of money are looked out for. The job is done only ostensibly for the job's sake, but in fact on account of the gain that it yields. One would indeed prefer not to be censor, but one wants to be - advanced; one would like to judge, administer, etc., according to his best convictions, but one is afraid of transfer or even dismissal; one must, above all things - live.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 237
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 month 2 weeks ago
Philosophy is not the owl of...

Philosophy is not the owl of Minerva that takes flight after history has been realized in order to celebrate its happy ending; rather, philosophy is subjective proposition, desire, and praxis that are applied to the event.

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49
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 2 weeks ago
Tocqueville predicted that in democratic countries...

Tocqueville predicted that in democratic countries the public would demand larger and larger doses of excitement and increasingly stronger stimulants from its writers. He probably did not expect that public to dramatize itself so extensively, to make the world scene everybody's theatre, or, in the developed countries, to take to alcohol and drugs in order to get relief from the horrors of ceaseless intensity, the torment of thrills and distractions. A great many writers have done little more than meet the mounting demand for thrills. I think that this demand has, in the language of marketing, peaked.

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The Distracted Public
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
That I, a funny little gesticulating...

That I, a funny little gesticulating animal on two legs, should stand beneath the stars and declaim in a passion about my rights - it seems so laughable, so out of all proportion. Much better, like Archimedes, to be killed because of absorption in eternal things... There is a possibility in human minds of something mysterious as the night-wind, deep as the sea, calm as the stars, and strong as Death, a mystic contemplation, the "intellectual love of God." Those who have known it cannot believe in wars any longer, or in any kind of hot struggle. If I could give to others what has come to me in this way, I could make them too feel the futility of fighting. But I do not know how to communicate it: when I speak, they stare, applaud, or smile, but do not understand.

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Letter to Miss Rinder, July 30, 1918
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 2 weeks ago
Our greatest stupidities may be very...

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.

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p. 39e
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 2 weeks ago
The free will, the actual motor...

The free will, the actual motor of reason in society, necessarily creates wrong. The individual must clash with the social order that claims to represent his own will in its objective form. But the wrong and the 'avenging justice' that remedies it not only expresses a 'higher logical necessity,' but also prepare the transition to a higher social form of freedom, the transition from abstract right to morality. For, in committing a wrong, and in accepting punishment for his deed, the individual becomes conscious of the 'infinite subjectivity' of his freedom. He learns that he is free only as a private person.

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P. 198
Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
2 months 1 day ago
I don't believe in total freedom...

I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and the rest of it.

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Artistic Freedom
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
5 months 1 day ago
You worry whether the drought will...

You worry whether the drought will end. It is far better that you pray that God may water your mind lest virtue wither away in it. You are greatly concerned with money that is lost or being wasted, or you worry about the advance of old age. I think it much to be desired that you provide first of all for the needs of your soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman
2 months 1 week ago
Statues are not about history. We...

Statues are not about history. We don't memorialize each piece of history. We memorialize things that we want to value and things that we want our children to walk by and say "This person embodied the values that I care about." Therefore, statues are about values not about history.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 3 weeks ago
Criminals together. We're in hell, my...

Criminals together. We're in hell, my little friend, and there's never any mistake there. People are not damned for nothing. 

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Act 1, sc. 5 Variant translation: Among murderers. We are in hell, my dear, there is never a mistake and people are not damned for nothing.
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 3 weeks ago
[E]xperience has taught me that those...

[E]xperience has taught me that those who give their time to the absorbing claims of what is called society, not having leisure to keep up a large acquaintance with the organs of opinion, remain much more ignorant of the general state either of the public mind, or of the active and instructed part of it, than a recluse who reads the newspapers need be.

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(p. 262)
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
4 months 2 weeks ago
In situations of sparse resources along...

In situations of sparse resources along with degraded self-images and depoliticized sensibilities, one avenue for poor people is in existential rebellion and anarchic expression. The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate people.

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The Role of Law in Progressive Politics in Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
In our fear, we are victims...

In our fear, we are victims of an aggression of the Future.

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Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 2 weeks ago
No realistic, sane person goes around...

No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.

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Humboldt's Gift (1975), p. 452
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1 month 3 days ago
Not everything assumes a name. Some...

Not everything assumes a name. Some things lead beyond words. Art inflames even a frozen, darkened soul to a high spiritual experience. Through art we are sometimes visited - dimly, briefly - by revelations such as cannot be produced by rational thinking. Like that little looking-glass from the fairy-tales: look into it and you will see - not yourself - but for one second, the Inaccessible, whither no man can ride, no man fly. And only the soul gives a groan...

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 2 days ago
Reason now gazes above the realm...

Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.

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L 50
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 3 weeks ago
Ignorance is not a simple lack...

Ignorance is not a simple lack of knowledge but an active aversion to knowledge, the refusal to know, issuing from cowardice, pride or laziness of mind. 

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Principle attributed to Popper by Ryszard Kapiscinski in New York Times obituary, 1995.
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
3 months 4 days ago
By narcissism is meant ceasing to...

By narcissism is meant ceasing to have an authentic interest in the outside world but instead an intense attachment to oneself, to one's own group, clan, religion, nation, race, etc. - with consequent serious distortions of rational judgment. In general, the need for narcissistic satisfaction derives from the necessity to compensate for material and cultural poverty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 2 weeks ago
Atheists have the intellectual courage to...

Atheists have the intellectual courage to accept reality for what it is: wonderfully and shockingly explicable. As an atheist, you have the moral courage to live to the full the only life you're ever going to get: to fully inhabit reality, rejoice in it, and do your best finally to leave it better than you found it.

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The Intellectual and Moral Courage of Atheism
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
3 months 6 days ago
My thoughts have been shaped by...

My thoughts have been shaped by the conviction that feminism must become a mass based political movement if it is to have a revolutionary, transformative impact on society.

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p. xiii.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 3 weeks ago
Some old poet's grand imagination is...

Some old poet's grand imagination is imposed on us as adamantine everlasting truth, and God's own word! Pythagoras says, truly enough, "A true assertion respecting God, is an assertion of God"; but we may well doubt if there is any example of this in literature.

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Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
3 months 6 days ago
Today's mic-hogging, fast-talking, contentious young….

Today's mic-hogging, fast-talking, contentious young (and old) lefties continue to hawk little books and pamphlets on revolution, always with choice words or documents from Marx, Mao, even Malcolm. But I've never seen a broadside with "A Black Feminist Statement or even the writings of Angela Davis or June Jordan or Barbara Omolade or Flo Kennedy or Audre Lorde or bell hooks or Michelle Wallace, at least not from the groups who call themselves leftist. These women's collective wisdom has provided the richest insights into American radicalism's most fundamental questions: How can we build a multiracial movement? Who are the working class and what do they desire? How do we resolve the Negro Question and the Woman Question? What is freedom?

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Robin Kelley Freedom Dreams
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 3 days ago
If there is.....
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Main Content / General
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel
1 month 2 days ago
Every relationship between two individuals or...

Every relationship between two individuals or two groups will be characterized by the ratio of secrecy that is involved in it. Even when one of the parties does not notice the secret factor, yet the attitude of the concealer, and consequently the whole relationship, will be modified by it.

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p. 462
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 3 weeks ago
Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions,...

Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 weeks ago
The new media are not bridges...

The new media are not bridges between man and nature: they are nature.

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(p. 14)
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
4 months 1 week ago
He who feared….

He who feared that he would not succeed sat still.

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Book I, epistle xvii, line 37
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
3 weeks 1 day ago
Secondary Qualities are not 'extended' but...

Secondary Qualities are not 'extended' but 'intensive'; their effects are not augmented by addition of parts, but by increased operation of the medium. Hence they are not measured directly, but by 'scales'; not by 'units', but by 'degrees'.

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Philosophical Maxims
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