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Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 1 week ago
There is hardly a philosophy which...

There is hardly a philosophy which has not invoked something like the will or desire to know, the love of truth, etcetera. But, in truth, very few philosophers-apart, perhaps, from Spinoza and Schopenhauer-have accorded it more than a marginal status; as if there was no need for philosophy to say first of all what the name that it bears actually refers to. As if placing at the head of its discourse the desire to know, which it repeats in its name, was enough to justify its own existence and show-at a stroke-that it is necessary and natural: All men desire to know. Who, then, is not a philosopher, and how could philosophy not be the most necessary thing in the world?

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pp. 4-5
Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
2 weeks 1 day ago
There is philosophy, which is about...

There is philosophy, which is about conceptual analysis - about the meaning of what we say - and there is all of this ... all of life.

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Emphasizing his views on philosophy as something abstract and separate from normal life to Isaiah Berlin, in the early 1930s, as quoted in A.J. Ayer: A Life (1999) by Ben Rogers, p. 2.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
In capitalist society however where social...

In capitalist society however where social reason always asserts itself only post festum great disturbances may and must constantly occur.

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Vol. II, Ch. XVI, p. 319.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 weeks 5 days ago
The saying that beauty is but...

The saying that beauty is but skin deep is but a skin-deep saying.

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Vol. 2, Ch. XIV, Personal Beauty
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
1 day ago
The Church is now more like...

The Church is now more like the Scribes and Pharisees than like Christ... What are now called the "essential doctrines" of the Christian religion he does not even mention.

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As quoted in The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913) by Edward Tyas Cook, p. 392
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
1 month 2 weeks ago
Man cannot be free if he...

Man cannot be free if he does not know that he is subject to necessity, because his freedom is always won in his never wholly successful attempts to liberate himself from necessity.

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The Human Condition (1958), part 3, chapter 16
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 2 weeks ago
Printing will tell you such useful...

Printing will tell you such useful things and such interesting things that not being able to read would be as bad as not being able to see.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
2 months 3 weeks ago
What! the inventors of ancient civilisations,...
What! the inventors of ancient civilisations, the first makers of tools and tape lines, the first builders of vehicles, ships, and houses, the first observers of the laws of the heavens and the multiplication tables is it contended that they were entirely different from the inventors and observers of our own time, and superior to them? And that the first slow steps forward were of a value which has not been equalled by the discoveries we have made with all our travels and circumnavigations of the earth?
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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
A house may be large or...

A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.

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Wage Labour and Capital (December 1847), in Marx Engels Selected Works, Volume I, p. 163.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 1 week ago
I am not bothered by...

I am not bothered by the fact that I am not understood. I am bothered when I do not know others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
1 month 1 week ago
Common sense doesn't have the last...

Common sense doesn't have the last word in ethics or anywhere else, but it has, as J. L. Austin said about language, the first word: it should be examined before it is discarded.

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p. 166.
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 2 weeks ago
Their worship was not paid to...

Their worship was not paid to the demon which such a being as they imagined would really be, but to their own idea of excellence. The evil is, that such a belief keeps the ideal wretchedly low; and opposes the most obstinate resistance to all thought which has a tendency to raise it higher. Believers shrink from every train of ideas which would lead the mind to a clear conception and an elevated standard of excellence, because they feel (even when they do not distinctly see) that such a standard would conflict with many of the dispensations of nature, and with much of what they are accustomed to consider as the Christian creed.

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(p. 42)
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 2 weeks ago
My dear reader, read aloud, if...

My dear reader, read aloud, if possible! If you do so, allow me to thank you for it: if you not only do it yourself, if you also influence others to do it, allow me to thank each one of them, and you again and again!

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1 month 2 weeks ago
I saw the Emperor-this world-soul-riding out...

I saw the Emperor-this world-soul-riding out of the city on reconnaissance. It is indeed a wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrated here at a single point, astride a horse, reaches out over the world and masters it.

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Hegel to Niethammer, October 13, 1806, in Hegel: the Letters (1998) translated by Clark Butler and Christiane Seiler, p. 114. Hegel: the Letters
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 2 weeks ago
In some lyceums they tell me...

In some lyceums they tell me that they have voted to exclude the subject of religion. But how do I know what their religion is, and when I am near to or far from it? I have walked into such an arena and done my best to make a clean breast of what religion I have experienced, and the audience never suspected what I was about.

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p. 490
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 week 3 days ago
Individuality, conceived as a temporal development...

Individuality, conceived as a temporal development involves uncertainty, indeterminacy, or contingency. Individuality is the source of whatever is unpredictable in the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
1 week 3 days ago
To eat, teeth must meet. The...

To eat, teeth must meet.

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The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974), p. 66.
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
1 month 3 weeks ago
The beauty or uncomeliness of many...

The beauty or uncomeliness of many things, in good and ill breeding, will be better learnt, and make deeper impressions on them, in the examples of others, than from any rules or instructions can be given about them.

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Sec. 82
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 weeks 1 day ago
Life is too full of death...

Life is too full of death for death to be able to add anything to it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 weeks 1 day ago
No one commits suicide for external...

No one commits suicide for external reasons, only because of inner disequilibrium. Under similar adverse circumstances, some are indifferent, some are moved, some are driven to suicide.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
2 weeks 2 days ago
Sleep is for the inhabitants of...

Sleep is for the inhabitants of Planets only. In another time, Man will sleep and wake continually at once. The greater part of our Body, of our Humanity itself, yet sleeps a deep sleep.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
1 month 1 week ago
He who intends to enjoy life...

He who intends to enjoy life should not be busy about many things, and in what he does should not undertake what exceeds his natural capacity. On the contrary, he should have himself so in hand that even when fortune comes his way, and is apparently ready to lead him on to higher things, he should put her aside and not o'erreach his powers. For a being of moderate size is safer than one that bulks too big.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 2 weeks ago
Most boys or youths who have...

Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened, but over-laid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions or phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own: and thus the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced for them. Mine, however, was not an education of cram. My father never permitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along with every step of the teaching, but, if possible, precede it. Anything which could be found out by thinking I never was told, until I had exhausted my efforts to find it out for myself.

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(p. 31)
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 days ago
Silent listening unites a people and...

Silent listening unites a people and creates community without communication.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 days ago
Christianity was an epidemic rather than...

Christianity was an epidemic rather than a religion. It appealed to fear, hysteria and ignorance. It spread across the Western world, not because it was true, but because humans are gullible and superstitious.

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p. 212
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 1 week ago
In its most general form, confinement...

In its most general form, confinement was explained, or at least justified, by a will to avoid scandal. It thereby signalled an important change in the consciousness of evil. The Renaissance had let unreason in all its forms come out into the light of day, as public exposure gave evil the chance to redeem itself and to serve as an exemplum.

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Part One: 5. The Insane
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
1 month 3 weeks ago
For the history of the centuries...

For the history of the centuries that have passed since the birth of Christ nowhere reveals conditions like those of the present. There has never been such building and planting in the world. There has never been such gluttonous and varied eating and drinking as now. Wearing apparel has reached its limit in costliness. Who has ever heard of such commerce as now encircles the earth? There have arisen all kinds of art and sculpture, embroidery and engraving, the like of which has not been seen during the whole Christian era. In addition men are so delving into the mysteries of things that today a boy of twenty knows more than twenty doctors formerly knew.

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Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent, Luke 21:25-36 (1522), as translated in The Precious and Sacred Writings of Martin Luther (1905) edited by John Nicholas Lenker
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 2 weeks ago
"They would say," he answered, "that...

"They would say," he answered, "that you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience."

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Ch. 7 : The Pendragon, section 2
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
1 month 2 weeks ago
As a rule, begin my lectures...

As a rule, begin my lectures on Scientific Method by telling my students that scientific method does not exist. ...having been ...the one and only professor of this non-existent subject within the British Commonwealth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
1 month 4 weeks ago
Do not be guilty of possessing...

Do not be guilty of possessing a library of learned books while lacking learning yourself.

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Letter to Christian Northoff (1497), as translated in Collected Works of Erasmus (1974), p. 115
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 days ago
The safest general characterization of the...

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

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Pt. II, ch. 1, sec. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
1 day ago
I believe that the nature of...

I believe that the nature of man is a contradiction rooted in the conditions of human existence that requires a search for solutions, which in their turn create new contradictions and now the need for answers. I believe that every answer to these contradictions can really satisfy the condition of helping man to overcome the sense of separation and to achieve a sense of agreement, of unity, and of belonging. I believe that in every answer to these contradictions, man has the possibility of choosing only between going forward or going back; these choices, which are translated into specific actions, are means toward the regressing or toward the progressing of the humanity that is in us.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 weeks 1 day ago
Effort supposes resistance....

Effort supposes resistance.

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Vol. I, par. 320
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 4 days ago
Woman, compared to other creatures, is...

Woman, compared to other creatures, is the image of God, for she bears dominion over them. But compared unto man, she may not be called the image of God, for she bears not rule and lordship over man, but ought to obey him. The woman shall be subject to man as unto Christ. For woman, has not her example from the body and from the flesh, that so she shall be subject to man, as the flesh is unto the Spirit, because that the flesh in the weakness and mortality of this life lusts and strives against the Spirit, and therefore would not the Holy Ghost give example of subjection to the woman of any such thing.

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As quoted by John Knox The First Blast to Awaken Women Degenerate (1558)
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
3 weeks 2 days ago
Language forms a kind of wealth,...

Language forms a kind of wealth, which all can make use of at once without causing any diminution of the store, and which thus admits a complete community of enjoyment; for all, freely participating in the general treasure, unconsciously aid in its preservation.

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Volume II, p. 213
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1 month 2 weeks ago
The science of religion is one...

The science of religion is one science within philosophy; indeed it is the final one. In that respect it presupposes the other philosophical disciplines and is therefore a result.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 weeks 2 days ago
What most astonishes me in the...

What most astonishes me in the United States, is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable multitude of small ones.

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Book Two, Chapter XIX.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
1 month 3 weeks ago
Marriage, a market which has nothing...

Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
1 month 3 weeks ago
The value of money is in...

The value of money is in proportion to the quantity of the necessaries of life which it will purchase.

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Chapter II, Part II, Article IV.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
1 month 3 weeks ago
They show as little Reason as...

They show as little Reason as Conscience who put the matter by with saying - "Men, in some cases, are lawfully made Slaves, and why may not these?" So men, in some cases, are lawfully put to death, deprived of their goods, without their consent; may any man, therefore, be treated so, without any conviction of desert? Nor is this plea mended by adding-"They are set forth to us as slaves, and we buy them without farther inquiry, let the sellers see to it." Such men may as well join with a known band of robbers, buy their ill-got goods, and help on the trade; ignorance is no more pleadable in one case than the other; the sellers plainly own how they obtain them. But none can lawfully buy without evidence that they are not concurring with Men-Stealers; and as the true owner has a right to reclaim his goods that were stolen, and sold; so the slave, who is proper owner of his freedom, has a right to reclaim it, however often sold.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 2 weeks ago
In its widest possible sense, however,...

In its widest possible sense, however, a man's Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down.

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Ch. 10
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is one thing to show...

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.

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Book IV, Ch. 7, sec. 11
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
1 month 3 weeks ago
There is no virtue they should...

There is no virtue they should be excited to, nor fault they should be kept from, which I do not think they may be convinced of; but it must be by such reasons as their age and understandings are capable of, and those propos'd always in very few and plain words.

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Sec. 81
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
A circuit performed by a capital...

A circuit performed by a capital and meant to be a periodical process, not an individual act, is called its turnover. The duration of this turnover is determined by the sum of its time of production and its time of circulation.

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Volume II, Ch. VII, p. 158.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Nature is the best posture-master. p....

Nature is the best posture-master.

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p. 167
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 weeks 2 days ago
What a hell of an economic...

What a hell of an economic system! Some are replete with everything while others, whose stomachs are no less demanding, whose hunger is just as recurrent, have nothing to bite on. The worst of it is the constrained posture need puts you in. The needy man does not walk like the rest; he skips, slithers, twists, crawls.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 weeks ago
Justice respects man...
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Main Content / General
Lucretius
Lucretius
2 months 3 days ago
Cease therefore to be…

Cease therefore to be dismayed by the mere novelty and so to reject reason from your mind with loathing: weigh the questions rather with keen judgment and if they seem to you to be true, surrender, or if the thing is false, gird yourself to the encounter.

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Book II, lines 1040-1043 (tr. Munro)
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
1 month 4 weeks ago
There is nothing I congratulate myself...

There is nothing I congratulate myself on more heartily than on never having joined a sect.

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As quoted in Thomas More and Erasmus (1965) by Ernest Edwin Reynolds, p. 248 [citation needed]
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
1 month 4 weeks 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
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