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John Searle
John Searle
1 month 4 days ago
My car and my adding machine...

My car and my adding machine understand nothing: they are not in that line of business.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
Valor is stability, not of legs...

Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 1 day ago
On condition that you protect my...

On condition that you protect my rights, I will protect your rights. How, then, does some party obtain the right to claim the protection of the other? Evidently, by actually protecting the rights of the other. But if this is so, no party will ever obtain a strictly legal claim to the protection of the other.

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P. 220
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 days ago
Self-reliance, the height and perfection of...

Self-reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.

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The Fugitive Slave Law, a lecture in NYC, March 7, 1854
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 days ago
If one advances confidently in the...

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours ... In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

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p. 364
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 1 day ago
I believe it to be this;...

I believe it to be this; that my will, absolutely of itself, and without the intervention of any instrument that might weaken its effect, shall act in a sphere perfectly congenial - reason upon reason, spirit upon spirit; in a sphere to which it does not give the laws of life, of activity, of progress, but which has them in itself, therefore, upon self-active reason. But spontaneous, self-active reason is will. The law of the transcendental world must, therefore, be a Will.

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Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.110
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 weeks 1 day ago
It is impossible...
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Main Content / General
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 1 day ago
Feelings, the most diverse…

Feelings, the most diverse, very strong and very weak, very significant and very worthless, very bad and very good, if only they infect the reader, the spectator, the listener, constitute the subject of art.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 3 weeks ago
Persons who feel themselves to be...

Persons who feel themselves to be exiles in this world-and what noble mind, from Empedocles down, has not had that feeling?-are mightily inclined to believe themselves citizens of another.

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pp. 39-40
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
2 months 3 weeks ago
Nowadays, to say that we are...

Nowadays, to say that we are clever animals is not to say something philosophical and pessimistic but something political and hopeful - namely, if we can work together, we can make ourselves into whatever we are clever and courageous enough to imagine ourselves becoming. This is to set aside Kant's question "What is man?" and to substitute the question "What sort of world can we prepare for our great grandchildren?"

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"Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality." Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (1998).
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
1 month 1 week ago
Can the "word" be pinned down...

Can the "word" be pinned down to either one period or one church? All churches are, of course, only more or less unsuccessful attempts to represent the unseen to the mind.

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Letter quoted in Florence Nightingale in Rome : Letters Written by Florence Nightingale in Rome in the Winter of 1847-1848 (1981)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 weeks ago
Knowledge is the plague of life,...

Knowledge is the plague of life, and consciousness, an open wound in its heart.

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 3 weeks ago
[I]t would be a piece of...

[I]t would be a piece of ingenuousness to accuse the man of to-day of his lack of moral code. The accusation would leave him cold, or rather, would flatter him. Immoralism has become a commonplace, and anybody and everybody boasts of practising it.

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Chapter XV: We Arrive At The Real Question
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
3 months 2 days ago
The beginning of religion, more precisely...

The beginning of religion, more precisely its content, is the concept of religion itself, that God is the absolute truth, the truth of all things, and subjectively that religion alone is the absolutely true knowledge.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 3 weeks ago
This new philosophy, however, was far...

This new philosophy, however, was far from giving the temporal an inherent position and function in the constitution of things. Change was acting on the side of man but only because of fixed laws which governed the changes that take place. There was hope in change just because the laws that govern it do not change.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 4 weeks ago
But in the end one needs...

But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 6 days ago
The good of the people must...

The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual.

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Article on Government
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
There is no wish more natural...

There is no wish more natural than the wish to know.

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Ch. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 weeks ago
There can be no freedom in...

There can be no freedom in the large sense of the word, no harmonious development, so long as mercenary and commercial considerations play an important part in the determination of personal conduct.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
3 weeks 6 days ago
The cruelest lies are often told...

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue?

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Truth of Intercourse.
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 weeks ago
Station, power, wealth-how inadequate they have...

Station, power, wealth-how inadequate they have proved! How useless and insecure!

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 3 weeks ago
I hear and I forget. I...

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 3 days ago
The superfluous…

The superfluous, a very necessary thing. 

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Variant translation: The superfluous is very necessary, Le Mondain, 1736
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 weeks ago
The contention that a standing army...

The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 days ago
Public life is a situation of...

Public life is a situation of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
3 months 2 days ago
It is a matter of perfect...

It is a matter of perfect indifference where a thing originated; the only question is: "Is it true in and for itself?" Many think that by pronouncing a doctrine to be Neo-Platonic, they have ipso facto banished it from Christianity. Whether a Christian doctrine stands exactly thus or thus in the Bible, the point to which the exegetical scholars of modern times devote all their attention is not the only question. The Letter kills, the Spirit makes alive: this they say themselves, yet pervert the sentiment by taking the Understanding for the Spirit.

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Pt. III, sec. 3, ch. 2 Lectures on the History of History Vol 1 p. 344 John Sibree translation (1857), 1914
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 days ago
In the Catholic Church, especially, they...

In the Catholic Church, especially, they go into chancery, make a clean confession, give up all, and think to start again. Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

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p. 487
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 3 weeks ago
Freud's fanciful pseudo-explanations (precisely because they...

Freud's fanciful pseudo-explanations (precisely because they are brilliant) perform a disservice. (Now any ass has these pictures available to use in "explaining" symptoms of an illness).

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p. 55e
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 4 days ago
Men will not understand ... that...

Men will not understand ... that when they fulfil their duties to men, they fulfil thereby God's commandments; that they are consequently always in the service of God, as long as their actions are moral, and that it is absolutely impossible to serve God otherwise.

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As quoted in German Thought, From The Seven Years' War To Goethe's Death : Six Lectures (1880) by Karl Hillebrand, p. 207
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
1 month 1 week ago
Over Christmas, Allen Newell and I...

Over Christmas, Allen Newell and I created a thinking machine.

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Simon (1956) quoted on CMU Libraries: Problem Solving Research
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 4 weeks ago
Manhattan. Sometimes from beyond the skyscrapers,...

Manhattan. Sometimes from beyond the skyscrapers, across of thousands of high walls, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia in the middle of the night, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 2 days ago
Neither of us cares a straw...

Neither of us cares a straw for popularity. A proof of this is for example, that, because of aversion to any personality cult, I have never permitted the numerous expressions of appreciation from various countries with which I was pestered during the existence of the International to reach the realm of publicity, and have never answered them, except occasionally by a rebuke. When Engels and I first joined the secret Communist Society we made it a condition that everything tending to encourage superstitious belief in authority was to be removed from the statutes.

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Remarks against personality cults from a letter to W. Blos (10 November 1877).
Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
1 month 4 weeks ago
The principles of logic and mathematics...

The principles of logic and mathematics are true simply because we never allow them to be anything else. And the reason for this is that we cannot abandon them without contradicting ourselves, without sinning against the rules which govern the use of language, and so making our utterances self-stultifying. In other words, the truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies.

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p. 77.
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 3 days ago
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in...

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

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As attributed in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 624
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months ago
The doctrine of the Second Coming...

The doctrine of the Second Coming has failed, so far as we are concerned, if it does not make us realize that at every moment of every year in our lives Donne's question "What if this present were the world's last night?" is equally relevant.

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Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
1 month 2 weeks ago
The Ottoman Empire whose sick body...

The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.

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No. 19. (Usbek writing to Rustan)
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
4 weeks 1 day ago
Penitence follows….

Penitence follows hasty decisions.

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Maxim 961
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months ago
In some places the metropolis makes...

In some places the metropolis makes do with paying a clique of feudal overlords; in others, it has fabricated a fake bourgeoisie of colonized subjects in a system of divide and rule; elsewhere, it has killed two birds with one stone: the colony is both settlement and exploitation.

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p. xlvi
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
3 months 5 days ago
Thus I may be said….

Thus it may be said that not only the soul, the mirror of an indestructible universe, is indestructible, but also the animal itself, though its mechanism may often perish in part and take off or put on an organic slough.

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La monadologie (77). Sometimes paraphrased as: The soul is the mirror of an indestructible universe.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 1 week ago
Of all the inventions of man...

Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.

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L 34
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 4 weeks ago
At this point of his effort...

At this point of his effort man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world. This must not be forgotten. This must be clung to because the whole consequence of a life can depend on it. The irrational, the human nostalgia, and the absurd that is born of their encounter, these are the three characters in the drama that must necessarily end with all the logic of which an existence is capable.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
4 weeks 1 day ago
In television, images are projected at...

In television, images are projected at you. You are the screen. The images wrap around you. You are the vanishing point.

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The diplomat, Issues 197-208, 1966, p. 20
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 days ago
The past alone is truly real:...

The past alone is truly real: the present is but a painful, struggling birth into the immutable being of what is no longer. Only the dead exist fully. The lives of the living are fragmentary, doubtful, and subject to change; but the lives of the dead are complete, free from the sway of Time, the all but omnipotent lord of the world. Their failures and successes, their hopes and fears, their joys and pains, have become eternal-our efforts cannot now abate one jot of them. Sorrows long buried in the grave, tragedies of which only a fading memory remains, loves immortalized by Death's hallowing touch these have a power, a magic, an untroubled calm, to which no present can attain. ...On the banks of the river of Time, the sad procession of human generations is marching slowly to the grave; in the quiet country of the Past, the march is ended, the tired wanderers rest, and the weeping is hushed.

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On History, 1904
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 days ago
No man with a genius for...

No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months ago
If He who in Himself can...

If He who in Himself can lack nothing chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months ago
To each according to his threat...

To each according to his threat advantage does not count as a principle of justice.

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Chapter III, Section 24, pg. 141
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 1 week ago
The true Gospel has it that...

The true Gospel has it that we are justified by faith alone, without the deeds of the Law.

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Chapter 2
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
4 weeks ago
The patient typically finds himself impelled...

The patient typically finds himself impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that doesn't seem to owe anything to evidence or reason, but which, nevertheless, he feels as totally compelling and convincing. We doctors refer to such a belief as "faith".

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 2 weeks ago
Religion in so far as it...

Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.

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"Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine" as translated in The Simone Weil Reader (1957) edited by George A. Panichas, p. 417
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months ago
The past is the luxury of...

The past is the luxury of proprietors.

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Philosophical Maxims
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