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Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 week 6 days ago
And this in turn makes it...

And this in turn makes it plain that the Right Man problem is a problem of highly dominant people. Dominance is a subject of enormous importance to biologists and zoologists because the percentage of dominant animals - or human beings - seems to be amazingly constant. Bernard Shaw once asked the explorer H. M. Stanley how many other men could take over leadership of the expedition if Stanley himself fell ill; Stanley replied promptly: "One in twenty." "Is that exact or approximate?" asked Shaw. "Exact." And biological studies have confirmed this as a fact. For some odd reason, precisely five per cent - one in twenty - of any animal group are dominant - have leadership qualities. During the Korean War, the Chinese made the interesting discovery that if they separated out the dominant five per cent of American prisoners of war, and kept them in separate compound, the remaining ninety-five per cent made no attempt to escape.

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p. 216
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 1 week ago
Furthermore, how will you endure [the...

Furthermore, how will you endure [the Romanists'] terrible idolatries? It was not enough that they venerated the saints and praised God in them, but they actually made them into gods. They put that noble child, the mother Mary, right into the place of Christ. They fashioned Christ into a judge and thus devised a tyrant for anguished consciences, so that all comfort and confidence was transferred from Christ to Mary, and then everyone turned from Christ to his particular saint. Can anyone deny this? Is it not true?

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Luther's Works, 47:45; cf. also Anderson, Stafford & Burgess (1992), p. 29
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 5 days ago
At different degrees, everything is pathology,...

At different degrees, everything is pathology, except for indifference.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 1 week ago
Above all, every relation must be...

Above all, every relation must be considered as suspicious, which depends in any degree upon religion, as the prodigies of Livy: And no less so, everything that is to be found in the writers of natural magic or alchemy, or such authors, who seem, all of them, to have an unconquerable appetite for falsehood and fable.

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Aphorism 29
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 4 weeks ago
If we cut up beasts simply...

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

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"Vivisection" (1947), p. 227
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 day ago
When a sixth of the population...

When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 4 days ago
Who does not...
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Main Content / General
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 2 days ago
Quite a heavy weight…

Quite a heavy weight, a name too quickly famous.

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La Henriade, chant troisième, l.41, 1722
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
1 month 3 weeks ago
The blues is relevant today because...

The blues is relevant today because when we look down through the corridors of time, the black American interpretation of tragicomic hope in the face of dehumanizing hate and oppression will be seen as the only kind of hope that has any kind of maturity in a world of overwhelming barbarity and bestiality. That barbarity is found not just in the form of terrorism but in the form of the emptiness of our lives - in terms of the wasted human potential that we see around the world. In this sense, the blues is a great democratic contribution of black people to world history.

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(p20)
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 day ago
There are a thousand hacking at...

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.

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p. 87
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months ago
No particular results then, so far,...

No particular results then, so far, but only an attitude of orientation, is what the pragmatic method means. The attitude of looking away from first things, principles, 'categories,' supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts.

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Lecture II, What Pragmatism Means
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 5 days ago
We say: he has no talent,...

We say: he has no talent, only tone. But tone is precisely what cannot be invented - we're born with it. Tone is an inherited grace, the privilege some of us have of making our organic pulsations felt - tone is more than talent, it is its essence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 day ago
A man fits out a ship...

A man fits out a ship at a great expense and sends it to the West Indies with a crew of men and boys, and after six months or a year, it comes back with a load of pine-apples; now, if no more gets accomplished than the speculator commonly aims at, if it simply turns out what is called a successful venture, I am less interested in this expedition than in some child's first excursions a-huckleberrying, in which it is introduced into a new world, experiences a new development, though it brings home only a gill of berries in its basket.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 1 week ago
He is worst of all, that...

He is worst of all, that is malicious against his friends.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months ago
I see that sensible men and...

I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion.

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The Preacher
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 2 days ago
The little honesty that exists among...

The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
1 month 3 weeks ago
The disciple must break the glass,...

The disciple must break the glass, or better the mirror, the reflection, his infinite speculation on the master. And start to speak.

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Cogito and The History of Madness, p.37 (Routledge classics edition)
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 day ago
Custom reconciles us to every thing....

Custom reconciles us to every thing.

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Part IV Section XVIII
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 5 days ago
To get up in the morning,...

To get up in the morning, wash and then wait for some unforeseen variety of dread or depression. I would give the whole universe and all of Shakespeare for a grain of ataraxy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 weeks 2 days ago
The apparatus defeats its own purpose...

The apparatus defeats its own purpose if its purpose is to create a humane existence on the basis of a humanized nature.

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pp. 145-146
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 1 day ago
The only possible solution which will...

The only possible solution which will preserve Germany's honor and Germany's interest is, we repeat, a war with Russia.

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Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe, Erste Abteilung, Volume 7, March to December 1848, p. 304.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 3 weeks ago
What is the case, the fact,...

What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.

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(2) Original German: Was der Fall ist, die Tatsache, ist das Bestehen von Sachverhalten.
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 2 days ago
Love truth…

Love truth, but pardon error.

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1738
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months ago
Many Catholic mystics have affirmed that,...

Many Catholic mystics have affirmed that, at a certain stage of that contemplative prayer in which, according to the most authoritative theologians, the life of Christian perfection ultimately consists, it is necessary to put aside all thought of the Incarnation as distracting from the higher knowledge of that which has been incarnated. From this fact have arisen misunderstandings in plenty and a number of intellectual difficulties.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months ago
The hand that rounded Peter's dome,...

The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity, Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew, The conscious stone to beauty grew.

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The Problem, st. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 4 days ago
IV. Every tax ought to be...

IV. Every tax ought to be contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state.

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Chapter II, Part II, p. 893.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 day ago
The religion and philosophy of the...

The religion and philosophy of the Hebrews are those of a wilder and ruder tribe, wanting the civility and intellectual refinements and subtlety of Vedic culture.

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A Tribute to Hinduism, 2008
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 5 days ago
Whenever I happen to be in...

Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out everyday: Massacres, unspeakable carnage, a doomsday chaos. How can so many human beings coexist in a space so confined without hating each other to death?

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month ago
The Life according to Reason consists...

The Life according to Reason consists herein, -that the Individual forget himself in the Race, place his own life in the life of the Race, and dedicate it thereto;-the Life opposed to Reason, on the contrary, consists in this, that the Individual think of nothing but himself, love nothing but himself and in relation to himself, and set his whole existence in his own personal well-being alone: -and since we may briefly call that which is according to Reason good, and that which is opposed to Reason evil, so there is but One Virtue, to forget one's own personality;-and but One Vice,-to make self the object of our thoughts.

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p. 33
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months ago
In the deepest heart of all...

In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.

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"Is Life Worth Living?"
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
1 month 3 weeks ago
Suffer no anxiety, for he who...

Suffer no anxiety, for he who is a sufferer of anxiety becomes regardless of enjoyment of the world and the spirit, and contraction happens to his body and soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
2 months 2 days ago
It is the duty of every...

It is the duty of every patriot to protect his country from its government.

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Edward Abbey, "A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." as written in "A Voice Crying in the Wilderness" (Vox Clamantis en Deserto): Notes from a Secret Journal (1990), ISBN 0312064888
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months ago
I look forward to a future...

I look forward to a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as between civilized peoples. All these beliefs of mine put me firmly into the anti-military party. But I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be permanent on this globe, unless the states, pacifically organized, preserve some of the old elements of army-discipline. A permanently successful peace-economy cannot be a simple pleasure-economy. In the more or less socialistic future toward which mankind seems drifting we must still subject ourselves collectively to those severities which answer to our real position upon this only partly hospitable globe. We must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which the military mind so faithfully clings.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 4 weeks ago
The world is sacred because it...

The world is sacred because it gives an inkling of a meaning that escapes us.

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p. 280
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 weeks 3 days ago
The Catholic solution of our problem,...

The Catholic solution of our problem, of our unique vital problem, the problem of the immortality and eternal salvation of the soul, satisfies the will, and therefore satisfies life; but the attempt to rationalize it by means of a dogmatic theology fails to satisfy the reason. And reason has its exigencies as imperious as those of life. It is no use seeking to force ourselves to consider as super-rational what clearly appears to us to be contra-rational... Infallibility, a notion of Hellenic origin, is in its essence a rationalistic category.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 4 weeks ago
But since he has decided to...

But since he has decided to have the impossibility of living, every misfortune is an opportunity which lays this importance of living before his eyes and obliges him to decide, once again, to die.

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p. 158
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 week 6 days ago
Jung believed that he was proceeding...

Jung believed that he was proceeding scientifically, but most Freudians remain convinced that he was inventing his own underground realm, rather as Tolkien invented Middle Earth. There is at least an element of truth in this view.

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p. 126
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
1 month 1 week ago
Since I have spread my wings...

Since I have spread my wings to purpose high, The more beneath my feet the clouds I see, The more I give the winds my pinions free, Spurning the earth and soaring to the sky.

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As quoted in "Giordano Bruno" by Thomas Davidson, in The Index Vol. VI. No. 36 (4 March 1886), p. 429
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 3 weeks ago
The meaning of a question is...

The meaning of a question is the method of answering it: then what is the meaning of 'Do two men really mean the same by the word "white"?' Tell me how you are searching, and I will tell you what you are searching for.

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Philosophical Remarks (1991), Part III (27), pp.66-67
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 3 days ago
No one talks more passionately about...
No one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any. By enlisting passion on his side he wants to stifle his reason and its doubts: thus he will acquire a good conscience and with it success among his fellow men.
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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 1 week ago
Number is the ruler of forms...

Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and daemons.

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As quoted in Life of Pythagoras (c. 300) by Iamblichus of Chalcis, as translated by Thomas Taylor (1818)
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 weeks ago
I often asked myself the following...

I often asked myself the following question. There is no doubt that at all times for many men one of the greatest tortures of their lives has been the contact, the collision with the folly of their neighbours. And yet how is it that there has never been attempted - I think this is so - a study on this matter, an Essay on Folly? For the pages of Erasmus do not treat of this aspect of the matter.

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Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 week 6 days ago
When we can't dream any longer...

When we can't dream any longer we die.

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Quoted by Margaret C. Anderson in "Emma Goldman in Chicago", Mother Earth magazine
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 5 days ago
To found a family. I think...

To found a family. I think it would have been easier for me to found an empire.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 3 days ago
May I really say it!
May I really say it! All truths are bloody truths to me, take a look at my previous writings.
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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
1 month 4 weeks ago
A rationalist, as I use the...

A rationalist, as I use the word, is a man who attempts to reach decisions by argument and perhaps, in certain cases, by compromise, rather than by violence. He is a man who would rather be unsuccessful in convincing another man by argument than successful in crushing him by force, by intimidation and threats, or even by persuasive propaganda.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 1 week ago
Friends are as companions on a...

Friends are as companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to persevere in the road to a happier life.

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As quoted in Gems of Thought: Being a Collection of More Than a Thousand Choice Selections
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 1 week ago
He is not rich, that enjoyeth...

He is not rich, that enjoyeth not his own goods.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 4 weeks ago
In my fiction I am careful...

In my fiction I am careful to make everything probable and to tie up all loose ends. Real life is not hampered by such considerations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 1 day ago
Communism differs from all previous movements...

Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals. Its organisation is, therefore, essentially economic, the material production of the conditions of this unity; it turns existing conditions into conditions of unity. The reality, which communism is creating, is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals, insofar as reality is only a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals themselves.

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Vol. I, Part 4.
Philosophical Maxims
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