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comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 3 days ago
A thing, moderately....
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Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 month 1 week ago
Whether you can observe a...

Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.

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Objecting to the placing of observables at the heart of the new quantum mechanics, during Heisenberg's 1926 lecture at Berlin; related by Heisenberg, quoted in Unification of Fundamental Forces (1990) by Abdus Salam
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
4 months 2 days ago
When contemporary feminist movement first began,...

When contemporary feminist movement first began, feminist writings and scholarship by black women was groundbreaking. The writings of black women like Cellestine Ware, Toni Cade Bambara, Michele Wallace, Barbara Smith, and Angela Davis, to name a few, were all works that sought to articulate, define, speak to and against the glaring omissions in feminist work, the erasure of black female presence.

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Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
5 months 3 weeks ago
If you only notice human proceedings,...

If you only notice human proceedings, you may observe that all who attain great power and riches, make use of either force or fraud; and what they have acquired either by deceit or violence, in order to conceal the disgraceful methods of attainment, they endeavor to sanctify with the false title of honest gains. Those who either from imprudence or want of sagacity avoid doing so, are always overwhelmed with servitude and poverty; for faithful servants are always servants, and honest men are always poor; nor do any ever escape from servitude but the bold and faithless, or from poverty, but the rapacious and fraudulent. God and nature have thrown all human fortunes into the midst of mankind; and they are thus attainable rather by rapine than by industry, by wicked actions rather than by good. Hence it is that men feed upon each other, and those who cannot defend themselves must be worried.

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Book III, Chapter 13
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
4 months 1 week ago
At present, when the prevailing forms...

At present, when the prevailing forms of society have become hindrances to the free expression of human powers, it is precisely the abstract branches of science, mathematics and theoretical physics, which ... offer a less distorted form of knowledge than other branches of science which are interwoven with the pattern of daily life, and the practicality of which seemingly testifies to their realistic character.

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p. 133.
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
4 months 1 day ago
When we resist impermanence, the self...

When we resist impermanence, the self intensifies.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
Every really able man, in whatever...

Every really able man, in whatever direction he work,-a man of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter,-if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be.

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Immortality
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 2 weeks ago
There are no arguments. Can anyone...

There are no arguments. Can anyone who has reached the limit bother with arguments, causes, effects, moral considerations, and so forth? Of course not. For such a person there are only unmotivated motives for living. On the heights of despair, the passion for the absurd is the only thing that can still throw a demonic light on chaos. When all the current reasons - moral, esthetic, religious, social, and so on - no longer guide one's life, how can one sustain life without succumbing to nothingness? Only by a connection with the absurd, by love of absolute uselessness, loving something which does not have substance but which simulates an illusion of life. I live because the mountains do not laugh and the worms do not sing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 3 weeks ago
Those who read and rightly understand...

Those who read and rightly understand my teaching will not start an insurrection; they have not learned that from me.

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p. 65
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 1 week ago
Unless some Hero-worship, in its new...

Unless some Hero-worship, in its new appropriate form, can return, this world does not promise to be very habitable long.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
In different hours, a man represents...

In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, - seven or eight ancestors at least, - and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.

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Fate
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
4 months 1 week ago
Because the peculiarity of man is...

Because the peculiarity of man is that his machinery for reaction on external things has involved an imaginative transcript of these things, which is preserved and suspended in his fancy; and the interest and beauty of this inward landscape, rather than any fortunes that may await his body in the outer world, constitute his proper happiness. By their mind, its scope, quality, and temper, we estimate men, for by the mind only do we exist as men, and are more than so many storage-batteries for material energy. Let us therefore be frankly human. Let us be content to live in the mind.

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p. 64
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 2 weeks ago
I was assailed by memories of...

I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 2 weeks ago
Irony is a qualification of subjectivity.

Irony is a qualification of subjectivity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 2 weeks ago
Irony limits, finitizes, and circumscribes and...

Irony limits, finitizes, and circumscribes and thereby yields truth, actuality, content; it disciplines and punishes and thereby yields balance and consistency.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
5 months 2 weeks ago
If life becomes hard to bear...

If life becomes hard to bear we think of improvements. But the most important and effective improvement, in our own attitude, hardly occurs to us, and we can decide on this only with the utmost difficulty.

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p. 60e
Philosophical Maxims
Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
1 month 4 weeks ago
The distinction between private and public...

The distinction between private and public undermines the unity of spiritual strength, draining the public of the transcendent energies while trivializing them because the merely private life provides no proper stage for their action.

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"Commerce and Culture," p. 280.
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is better to form new...

It is better to form new words as technical terms, than to employ old ones in which the last three Aphorisms cannot be complied with.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 1 week ago
O reader, to what shifts is...

O reader, to what shifts is poor Society reduced, struggling to give still some account of herself, in epochs when Cash Payment has become the sole nexus of man to men!

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Ch. 6, Laissez-Faire.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 1 week ago
To entire sincerity there belongs ceaselessness....

To entire sincerity there belongs ceaselessness. Not ceasing, it continues long. Continuing long, it evidences itself. Evidencing itself, it reaches far. Reaching far, it becomes large and substantial. Large and substantial, it becomes high and brilliant. Large and substantial; this is how it contains all things. High and brilliant; this is how it overspreads all things. Reaching far and continuing long; this is how it perfects all things. So large and substantial, the individual possessing it is the co-equal of Earth. So high and brilliant, it makes him the co-equal of Heaven. So far-reaching and long-continuing, it makes him infinite. Such being its nature, without any display, it becomes manifested; without any movement, it produces changes; and without any effort, it accomplishes its ends.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 3 weeks ago
Genes and culture have co-evolved. But...

Genes and culture have co-evolved. But crudely, natural selection "designed" male human primates to hunt nonhumans and build coalitions of other male human primates in order to wage territorial wars of aggression. Nature didn't design us to become a scientific community and collaborate to overcome aging. It's difficult to imagine that any human enemy could inflict such gruesome damage on the victims as growing old. The ravages of aging strike down combatants and civilians alike. So the trillions of dollars that humans currently spend on ways to harm and kill each other ("defence") would be more fruitfully spent on defeating our common enemy. We should work together to build a "Triple S" civilisation of superlongevity, superhappiness and superintelligence.

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Transhumanism 2017: Towards a 'Triple S' civilisation of Superlongevity, Superintelligence and Superhappiness, Timeship Buddha
Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
1 month 3 weeks ago
The three great American vices seem...

The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous.

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p. 162
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
4 months 2 weeks ago
The most important subject, and the...

The most important subject, and the first problem of philosophy, is the restoration in man of the lost image of God; so far as this relates to science.Should this restoration in the internal consciousness be fully understood, and really brought about, the object of pure philosophy is attained.

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Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
4 months 5 days ago
If I knew of…

If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman, because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.

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I.
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
1 month 2 weeks ago
If we are serious about peace,...

If we are serious about peace, then we must work for it as ardently, seriously, continuously, carefully, and bravely as we have ever prepared for war.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 month 2 weeks ago
A vehement eros runs through the...

A vehement eros runs through the Universe. It is like the ether: harder than steel, softer than air. It cuts through and passes beyond all things, it flees and escapes.

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Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
1 month 2 weeks ago
Reason can make little headway on...

Reason can make little headway on its own and struggles to be heard; often it has to be - so to speak - armed by the fearsome epigram. French wit pricks like a needle, so that the thread goes through the hole.

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Sixth Dialogue, p. 160
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 2 weeks ago
No body wishes more than I...

No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America. I can add with truth, that no body wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced for raising the condition both of their body & mind to what it ought to be, as fast as the imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstances which cannot be neglected, will admit.

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Letter to Benjamin Banneker (30 August 1791), quoted in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1853), p. 291
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 2 weeks ago
Philosophy of religion ... really amounts...

Philosophy of religion ... really amounts to ... philosophizing on certain favorite assumptions that are not confirmed at all.

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E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 143
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
Even when the experts all agree,...

Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.

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A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42 (1996), p. 281
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
4 months ago
By incestuous symbiosis is meant the...

By incestuous symbiosis is meant the tendency to stay tied to the mother and to her equivalents - blood, family, tribe - to fly from the unbearable weight of responsibility, of freedom, of awareness, and to be protected and loved in a state of certainty dependence that the individual pays for with the ceasing of his own human development.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 2 weeks ago
I remember the very place in...

I remember the very place in Hyde Park where, in my fourteenth year, on the eve of leaving my father's house for a long absence, he told me that I should find, as I got acquainted with new people, that I had been taught many things which youths of my age did not commonly know; and that many persons would be disposed to talk to me of this, and to compliment me upon it. What other things he said on this topic I remember very imperfectly; but he wound up by saying, that whatever I knew more than others, could not be ascribed to any merit in me, but to the very unusual advantage which had fallen to my lot.

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(p. 34)
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 1 week ago
Leaving virtue without proper cultivation;...

Leaving virtue without proper cultivation; not thoroughly discussing what is learned; not being able to move towards righteousness of which a knowledge is gained; and not being able to change what is not good: these are the things which occasion me solicitude.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 months 1 week ago
A single breaker may recede; but...

A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.

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pp. 266-267
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 3 weeks ago
...they cudgel their brains with absurd...

...they cudgel their brains with absurd questions, such as, for instance, why God did not make the world many centuries earlier. They persuade themselves that it is easy to conceive, to be sure, how God may discern what is present, that is, what is actual in the time in which he is, but how He may foresee what is future, that is, what is actual in the time in which He is not yet, they deem an intellectual difficulty; as if the existence of the Necessary Being descended through all the moments of an imaginary time, and, having already exhausted a part of His duration, saw before Him the eternity He was yet to live simultaneously with the present events of the world. All these difficulties upon proper insight into the notion of time vanish like smoke.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
4 months 2 weeks ago
The primary use of knowledge is...

The primary use of knowledge is for such guidance of conduct under all circumstances as shall make living complete. All other uses of knowledge are secondary.

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Vol. 3, Ch. XV, The Americans
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 2 weeks ago
It appears... that a work similar...

It appears... that a work similar in its object and general conception to that of Adam Smith, but adapted to the more extended knowledge and improved ideas of the present age, is the kind of contribution which Political Economy at present requires. The Wealth of Nations is in many parts obsolete, and in all, imperfect. Political Economy... has grown up almost from infancy since the time of Adam Smith; and the philosophy of society... has advanced many steps beyond the point at which he left it.

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Preface, 1848
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
4 months 4 days ago
It must be recognized that man...

It must be recognized that man in his limited and relative earthly life is capable of bringing about the beautiful and the valuable only when he believes in another life, unlimited, absolute, eternal. That is a law of his being. A contact with this mortal life exclusive of any other ends in the wearing-away of effective energy and a self-satisfaction that makes one useless and superficial. Only the spiritual man, striking his roots deep in infinite and eternal life, can be a true creator. But Humanism denied the spiritual man, handed over the eternal to the temporal, and took its stand by the natural man within the limited confines of the earth.

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p. 34
Philosophical Maxims
Georges Sorel
Georges Sorel
1 month 4 weeks ago
As the State formerly played a...

As the State formerly played a most important part in the revolutions that abolished the old economic systems, so it must again be the State that should abolish capitalism.

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p. 170
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 2 weeks ago
How absurd men are! They never...

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

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Either/Or Part I, Swenson Translation p. 19 Variations include: People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought, which they avoid. People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 3 weeks ago
Here I stand; I can do...

Here I stand; I can do no otherwise. God help me. Amen!

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As reported in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 186; and in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed.
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
5 months 1 week ago
False men and shams talk big...

False men and shams talk big and do nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
4 months 2 weeks ago
Now, to say that a lot...

Now, to say that a lot of objects is finite, is the same as to say that if we pass through the class from one to another we shall necessarily come round to one of those individuals already passed; that is, if every one of the lot is in any one-to-one relation to one of the lot, then to every one of the lot some one is in this same relation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 2 weeks ago
Vague a l'ame - melancholy yearning...

Vague a l'ame - melancholy yearning for the end of the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
4 months 2 weeks ago
There is rarely a creative man...

There is rarely a creative man who does not have to pay a high price for the divine spark of his greatest gifts...the human element is frequently bled for the benefit of the creative element and to such an extent that it even brings out the bad qualities, as for instance, ruthless, naive egoism (so-called "auto-eroticism"), vanity, all kinds of vices-and all this in order to bring to the human I at least some life-strength, since otherwise it would perish of sheer inanition.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months 2 weeks ago
Of all the ways whereby children...

Of all the ways whereby children are to be instructed, and their manners formed, the plainest, easiest, and most efficacious, is, to set before their eyes the examples of those things you would have them do, or avoid; which, when they are pointed out to them, in the practice of persons within their knowledge, with some reflections on their beauty and unbecomingness, are of more force to draw or deter their imitation, than any discourses which can be made to them.

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Sec. 82
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
4 months 2 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
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 2 weeks ago
He who knows only his own...

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.

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Ch. II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 5 days ago
The cult of the Virgin, Mariolatry,...

The cult of the Virgin, Mariolatry, which by the gradual elevation of the divine element in the Virgin has led almost to her deification, answers merely to the feeling that God should be a perfect man, that God should include in his nature the feminine element. The progressive exaltation of the Virgin Mary, the work of Catholic piety, having its beginning in the expression Mother of God, ...has culminated in attributing to her the status of co-redeemer and in the dogmatic declaration of her conception without the stain of original sin. Hence she now occupies a position between Humanity and Divinity and nearer Divinity than Humanity. And it has been surmised that in course of time she may perhaps even come to be regarded as yet another personal manifestation of the Godhead.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
3 months 3 weeks ago
Rationality requires a complete knowledge and...

Rationality requires a complete knowledge and anticipation of the consequences that will follow on each choice. In fact, knowledge of consequences is always fragmentary.

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Philosophical Maxims
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