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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
Philosophy is to be studied, not...

Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
1 day ago
One of the problems... both on...

One of the problems... both on the left and the right is that the... individual autonomy protected by liberalism tends to take more and more extreme versions... and... becomes self-undermining.

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13:24
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 5 days ago
Honest work is much better than...

Honest work is much better than a mansion.

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p. 82
Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
1 month 3 weeks ago
The Text is plural. Which is...

The Text is plural. Which is not simply to say that it has several meanings, but that it accomplishes the very plural of meaning: an irreducible (and not merely an acceptable) plural. The Text is not a co-existence of meanings but a passage, an overcrossing; thus it answers not to an interpretation, even a liberal one, but to an explosion, a dissemination.

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Proposition 4
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 2 days ago
In every rebellion is to be...

In every rebellion is to be found the metaphysical demand for unity, the impossibility of capturing it, and the construction of a substitute universe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
2 months 3 weeks ago
When scolded for masturbating in public,...

When scolded for masturbating in public, he said "I wish it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing my belly."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 46, 69
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 2 days ago
Every person I met believes if...

Every person I met believes if there is any disagreement between the Koran and science, then the Koran wins. It's just utterly deplorable. These are now British children who are having their minds stuffed with alien rubbish. Occasionally, my colleagues lecturing in universities lament having undergraduate students walk out of their classes when they talk about evolution. This is almost entirely Muslims.

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Dawkins attacks 'alien rubbish' taught in Muslim faith schools, Daily Mail
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 6 days ago
The moral flabbiness born of the...

The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That - with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success - is our national disease.

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To H. G. Wells, 9/11/1906
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 1 day ago
All testing, all confirmation and...

All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments; no it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which our arguments have their life.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 6 days ago
Alexander's career was piracy pure and...

Alexander's career was piracy pure and simple, nothing but an orgy of power and plunder, made romantic by the character of the hero. There was no rational purpose in it, and the moment he died his generals and governors attacked one another.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 6 days ago
Nature is the best posture-master. p....

Nature is the best posture-master.

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p. 167
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
1 month 1 week ago
Where questions of style and exposition...

Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself.

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P. x.
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 4 weeks ago
And that servant, which knew his...

And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.

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Luke 12:47 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 1 week ago
Most men pursue pleasure with such...

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
I am sure that university life...

I am sure that university life would be better, both intellectually and morally, if most university students had temporary childless marriages. This would afford a solution to the sexual urge neither restless nor surreptitious, neither mercenary nor casual, and of such a nature that it need not take up time which ought to be given to work.

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"Sex in Education", p. 119-120
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
I wish to propose for the...

I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.

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Ch. 1: The Value of Scepticism
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
A child might be overawed by...

A child might be overawed by a great city, but a civil engineer knows that he might demolish it and rebuild it himself. Husserl's philosophy has the same aim: to show us that, although we may have been thrust into this world without a 'by your leave,' we are mistaken to assume that it exists independently of us. It is true that reality exists apart from us; but what we mistake for the world is actually a world constituted by us, selected from an infinitely complex reality.

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p. 63
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 1 week ago
If, while hurrying ostensibly to the...

If, while hurrying ostensibly to the temple of truth, we hand the reins over to our personal interests which look aside at very different guiding stars, for instance at the tastes and foibles of our contemporaries, at the established religion, but in particular at the hints and suggestions of those at the head of affairs, then how shall we ever reach the high, precipitous, bare rock whereon stands the temple of truth?

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E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 22-23
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months 5 days ago
An intuitionist conception of justice is,...

An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception.

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Chapter I, Section 8, pg. 41
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 5 days ago
Fear? If I have gained anything...

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 4 weeks ago
This organization of functional discourse is...

This organization of functional discourse is of vital importance; it serves as a vehicle of coordination and subordination. The unified, functional language is an irreconcilably anti-critical and anti-dialectical language. In it, operational and behavioral rationality absorbs the transcendent, negative, oppositional elements of Reason.

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p. 97
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
Since I would rather make of...

Since I would rather make of him an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to choose a guide with a well-made rather than a well-filled head.

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Ch. 26. On the Education of Children
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
As a philosopher, if I were...

As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.

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"Proof of God"
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 days ago
Better to be an animal than...

Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 1 week ago
Of all those expensive and uncertain...

Of all those expensive and uncertain projects, however, which bring bankruptcy upon the greater part of the people who engage in in them, there is none perhaps more perfectly ruinous than the search after new silver and gold mines. It is perhaps the most disadvantageous lottery in the world, or the one in which the gain of those who draw the prizes bears the least proportion to the loss of those who draw the blanks: for though the prizes are few and the blanks are many, the common price of a ticket is the whole fortune of a very rich man.

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Chapter VII, Part First, p. 610.
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
2 months 3 days ago
Mankind will never be, in an...

Mankind will never be, in an eminent degree, virtuous and happy till each man shall possess that portion of distinction and no more, to which he is entitled by his personal merits. The dissolution of aristocracy is equally the interest of the oppressor and the oppressed. The one will be delivered from the listlessness of tyranny, and the other from the brutalizing operation of servitude.

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Book V, Chapter 11, "Moral Effects of Aristocracy"
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
If a man is offered a...

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance with his instincts, he will accept it even on the slenderest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

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Ch. VI: International relations, p. 97
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
1 month 1 week ago
Violence as a tool is already...

Violence as a tool is already operating in the world before anyone takes it up: that fact alone neither justifies nor discounts the use of the tool. What seems most important, however, is that the tool is already part of a practice, presupposing a world conducive to its use; that the use of the tool builds or rebuilds a specific kind of world, activating a sedimented legacy of use. When any of us commit acts of violence, we are, in and through those acts, building a more violent world.

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p. 19
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 1 week ago
This realistic image, however, does not...

This realistic image, however, does not catch at all what really is, but what should not be - death and misery - what should not exist, from our moral and humanistic point of view. And at the same time making an aesthetic and commercial, perfectly immoral use and abuse of this misery. Images that actually testify, behind their pretended "objectivity", of a deep denial of the real, and of an equal denial of the image - assigned to present what does not even want to be represented, assigned to the rape of the real by burglary.

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Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
3 months 1 week ago
Needs must it be hard….

Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labour be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

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Part V, Prop. XLII, Scholium
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 2 days ago
You contain a trillion copies of...

You contain a trillion copies of a large, textual document written in a highly accurate, digital code, each copy as voluminous as a substantial book. I'm talking, of course, of the DNA in your cells.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 1 week ago
The teaching of my philosophy... that...

The teaching of my philosophy... that our whole existence is something which had better not have been, and that to disown and disclaim it is the highest wisdom.

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Ch 1
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
3 months 2 weeks ago
Never trust her at any time….

Never trust her at any time, when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile.

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Book II, lines 557-559 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 5 days ago
For what comes is Judgment: happy...

For what comes is Judgment: happy are those whom it finds labouring in their vocations, whether they were merely going out to feed the pigs or laying good plans to deliver humanity a hundred years hence from some great evil. The curtain has indeed now fallen. Those pigs will never in fact be fed, the great campaign against White Slavery or Governmental Tyranny will never in fact proceed to victory. No matter; you were at your post when the Inspection came.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 5 days ago
An intellectual is a person who...

An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.

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As quoted without citation in Discovering Evolutionary Ecology: Bringing Together Ecology And Evolution (2006) by Peter J. Mayhew, p. 24
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 2 days ago
So it is that you come...

So it is that you come to know what a real God is. ... The God wants my life. He wants to go with me, sit at the table with me, work with me. Above all he wants to be ever-present.

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P. 291
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
2 months 3 weeks ago
When he was wounded with an...

When he was wounded with an arrow in the ankle, and many ran to him that were wont to call him a god, he said smiling, "That is blood, as you see, and not, as Homer saith, 'such humour as distils from blessed gods.'"

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43 Alexander
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 2 days ago
The greatest saving one can make...

The greatest saving one can make in the order of thought is to accept the unintelligibility of the world and to pay attention to man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Antisthenes
Antisthenes
2 months 3 weeks ago
The investigation…

The investigation of the meaning of words is the beginning of education.

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Arrian, Discourses of Epictetus, i. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
1 day ago
On the left you had a...

On the left you had a different aspect of individual autonomy that was pushed to an extreme, which really had to do with the autonomy that individuals have to create their own lifestyles. ...The basic concept of liberal autonomy has to do with your ability to make moral choices, but as time went on the emphasis came to be not on making the right moral choices within an existing moral framework, but rather to be able to make up that framework on your own, that that was the ultimate expression of individual human freedom, and it has obvious problems for a society because all societies have to be based on shared norms that allow people to coordinate their actions, to communicate, and the like... If you believe that the rules can be... set by anybody and that transgressing existing rules is automatically a good thing, you're not going to have... a stable society.

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15:05
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 4 weeks ago
I know not how the world...

I know not how the world will receive it, nor how it may reflect on those that shall seem to favor it. For in a way beset with those that contend, on one side for too great Liberty, and on the other side for too much Authority, 'tis hard to passe between the points of both unwounded.

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The Epistle Dedicatory, Paris, April 15-25, 1651
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 6 days ago
Persons of genius, it is true,...

Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow. Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.

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Ch. III: Of Individuality, As One of the Elements of Well-Being
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 5 days ago
The truth is that the State...

The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere.

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As quoted in Tolstoy (1988) by A. N. Wilson, p. 146
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
3 months 1 week ago
Between the Shaman of the Tungus,...

Between the Shaman of the Tungus, the European prelate who rules church and state, the Voguls, and the Puritans, on the one hand, and the man who listens to his own command of duty, on the other, the difference is not that the former make themselves slaves, while the latter is free, but that the former have their lord outside themselves, while the latter carries his lord in himself, yet at the same time is his own slave.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
2 months 1 week ago
For the world, I count it...

For the world, I count it not an Inn, but a Hospital, and a place, not to live, but to die in.

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Section 11
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 6 days ago
I trust a good deal to...

I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

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February 1855
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 6 days ago
Those who assert that the mathematical...

Those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or the good are in error. For these sciences say and prove a great deal about them; if they do not expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are their results or definitions, it is not true that they tell us nothing about them. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 days ago
What I know wreaks havoc upon...

What I know wreaks havoc upon what I want.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 days ago
The source of an emotion is...

The source of an emotion is very difficult to grasp, but it comes to just that. That holds for all phenomena, for faith, etc. Why did it begin, how did it develop? and so forth-only he who has the gift of divination can perceive where it really comes from. But it is not accessible to reflection.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 6 days ago
We are all....
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