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Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
2 months 1 week ago
It was Rudolf Carnap's dream for...

It was Rudolf Carnap's dream for the last three decades of his life to show that science proceeds by a formal syntactic method; today no one to my knowledge holds out any hope for that project.

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Hilary Putnam, in: James Conant, Urszula M. Zeglen (2012) Hilary Putnam: Pragmatism and Realism. p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 1 week ago
The statesman who should attempt to...

The statesman who should attempt to direct people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

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Chapter II
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
4 days ago
If a due participation of office...

If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none.

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Letter to Elias Shipman and others of New Haven (12 July 1801). Often misquoted as, "few die and none resign".
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
8 months 1 week ago
Objective thought is prayer

Tibetan prayer wheels: you write a prayer on a paper, put the rolled paper on a wheel, and turn it automatically, without thinking. In this way, the wheel itself is praying for me, instead of me - or more precisely, I myself am praying through the medium of the wheel. The beauty of it all is that in my psychological inferiority I can think about whatever I want, I can yield to the most dirty and obscene fantasies, and it does not matter because - to use a good old Stalinist expression - 'whatever I am thinking, objectively I am praying.'

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 4 days ago
A gun gives you the body,...

A gun gives you the body, not the bird.

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Quoted by Ralph Waldo Emerson, in C. J. Woodbury (ed.) Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1890
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
3 months 3 weeks ago
The only justifiable stopping place for...

The only justifiable stopping place for the expansion of altruism is the point at which all whose welfare can be affected by our actions are included within the circle of altruism. This means that all beings with the capacity to feel pleasure or pain should be included; we can improve their welfare by increasing their pleasures and diminishing their pains.

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Chapter 4, Reason, p. 120
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 4 days ago
The best friend is he that,...

The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person's good, wishes it for that person's own sake.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 1 day ago
When one plays for top prizes...

When one plays for top prizes one must be prepared to pay top stakes.

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 months 2 weeks ago
The jargon makes it seem that...

The jargon makes it seem that ... the pure attention of the expression to the subject matter would be a fall into sin.

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p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
4 days ago
I have ever deemed it more...

I have ever deemed it more honorable and profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.

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As quoted in The Life and Writings of Thomas Jefferson : Including All of His Important Utterances on Public Questions (1900) by Samuel E. Forman, p. 429
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months ago
I'm not one of those who...

I'm not one of those who wants to stop Christian traditions. This is historically a Christian country. I'm a cultural Christian the same way as many of my friends call themselves cultural Jews or cultural Muslims. So, yes, I love singing carols along with everybody else. I'm not one of those who wants to purge our society of our Christian history.

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BBC's Have Your Say
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 days ago
It is the magician's bargain: give...

It is the magician's bargain: give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 4 weeks ago
In France at least, the history...

In France at least, the history of science and thought gives pride of place sciences, sciences of the necessary, all close to philosophy: one can observe in their history the almost uninterrupted emergence of truth and pure reason. The other disciplines, however - those, for example, that concern living beings, languages, or economic facts - are considered too tinged with empirical thought, too exposed to the vagaries of chance or imagery to age old traditions and external events, for it to be supposed that their history could be anything other irregular. At most, they are expected to provide evidence of a state of mind, an intellectual fashion, a mixture of archaism and bold conjecture, of intuition and blindness. But what if empirical knowledge, at a given time and in a given culture, did possess a well defined regularity.

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Foreword to the English edition
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months ago
Facing a landscape annihilated by the...

Facing a landscape annihilated by the light, to remain serene supposes a temper I do not have. The sun is my purveyor of black thoughts; and summer the season when I have always reconsidered my relations with this world and with myself, to the greatest prejudice of both.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
2 months 4 weeks ago
With this as its basic constitution,...

With this as its basic constitution, civilization achieved things of which gentile society was not even remotely capable. But it achieved them by setting in motion the lowest instincts and passions in man and developing them at the expense of all his other abilities. From its first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization; wealth and again wealth and once more wealth, wealth, not of society, but of the single scurvy individual-here was its one and final aim. If at the same time the progressive development of science and a repeated flowering of supreme art dropped into its lap, it was only because without them modern wealth could not have completely realized its achievements.

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The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) as translated by Ernest Untermann (1902)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 days ago
The mother principle [is] that 'governments...

The mother principle is that 'governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 4 days ago
If a thousand [citizens] were not...

If a thousand [citizens] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
4 months 6 days ago
But the chief design of this...

But the chief design of this paper is not to disprove it, which many have sufficiently done; but to entreat Americans to consider.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months ago
That history just unfolds, independently of...

That history just unfolds, independently of a specified direction, of a goal, no one is willing to admit.

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Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
3 months 3 weeks ago
He was breakfasting in the marketplace,...

He was breakfasting in the marketplace, and the bystanders gathered round him with cries of "dog." "It is you who are dogs," cried he, "when you stand round and watch me at my breakfast."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 61
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
4 days ago
The major and almost only theme...

The major and almost only theme of all my work is the struggle of man with "God": the unyielding, inextinguishable struggle of the naked worm called "man" against the terrifying power and darkness of the forces within him and around him.

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As quoted in Nikos Kazantzakis (1968) by Helen Kazantzakis, p. 507
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 days ago
""You do not love the mind...

""You do not love the mind of your race, nor the body. Any kind of creature will please you if only it is begotten by your kind as they now are. It seems to me, Thick One, what you really love is no completed creature but the very seed itself: for that is all that is left".

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Oyarsa
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 4 days ago
Fairness, justice, universal human rights...
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Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 5 days ago
In the external, patience is some...

In the external, patience is some third element that must be added, and, humanly speaking, it would be better if it were not needed; some days it is needed more, some days less, all according to fortune, whose debtor a person becomes, even though he gained ever so little, because only when he wants to gain patience does he become one's debtor.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 5 days ago
When you are reading God's Word,...

When you are reading God's Word, it is not the obscure passages that bind you but what you understand, and with that you comply at once. If you understood only one single passage in all of Holy Scripture, well, then you must do that first of all, but you do not first have to sit down and ponder the obscure passages.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
4 months 2 weeks ago
Pleasant it is…

Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another's great tribulation: not because any man's troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive from what ills you are free yourself is pleasant.

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Book II, lines 1-4 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 day ago
The message of radio is one...

The message of radio is one of violent, unified implosion and resonance.

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(p. 263)
Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
2 months 1 week ago
Nietzsche's break with Schopenhauer rests on...

Nietzsche's break with Schopenhauer rests on precisely this point; it is a matter of knowing whether the will is unitary or multiple.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 1 day ago
There is no belief, however foolish,...

There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Porphyry
Porphyry
3 months 2 weeks ago
Soul, indeed, is a certain medium...

Soul, indeed, is a certain medium between an impartible essence, and an essence which is divisible about bodies. But intellect is an impartible essence alone. And qualities and material forms are divisible about bodies. Not everything which acts on another, effects that which it does effect by approximation and contact; but those natures which effect any thing by approximation and contact, use approximation accidentally.

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 3 weeks ago
The species with eyes appears suddenly,...

The species with eyes appears suddenly, capriciously as it were, and it is this species which changes the environment by creating its visible aspect. The eye does not come into being because it is needed. Just the contrary; because the eye appears it can henceforth be applied as a serviceable instrument. Each species builds up its stock of useful habits by selecting among, and taking advantage of, the innumerable useless actions which a living being performs out of sheer exuberance.

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p. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 3 weeks ago
The way of the superior man...

The way of the superior man may be found, in its simple elements, in the intercourse of common men and women; but in its utmost reaches, it shines brightly through Heaven and Earth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 5 days ago
Men fear thought as they fear...

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. It sees man, a feeble speck, surrounded by unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears itself proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the universe. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

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pp. 178-179
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is better wither to be...

It is better wither to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; and do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few.

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tyron Edwards, p. 525
Philosophical Maxims
Antisthenes
Antisthenes
3 months 3 weeks ago
One should attend….

One should attend to one's enemies, for they are the first persons to detect one's errors.

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§ 5
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
4 months 1 week ago
In the country of....

In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

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Adagia (first published 1500, with numerous expanded editions through 1536), III, IV, 96
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months ago
I do feel visceral revulsion at...

I do feel visceral revulsion at the burka because for me it is a symbol of the oppression of women.

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As quoted in Richard Dawkins causes outcry after likening the burka to a bin liner (10 August 2010), The Telegraph.
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
5 months 1 day ago
The characters of self-restrained officials are...

The characters of self-restrained officials are exceedingly careful and just and conservative, but they lack keenness and a certain quick and active boldness. The courageous natures, on the other hand, are deficient in justice and caution in comparison with the former, but excel in boldness of action; and unless both these qualities are present it is impossible for a state to be entirely prosperous in public and private matters.

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Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
3 days ago
Small creatures die because larger creatures...

Small creatures die because larger creatures are hungry. How superior to this human confusion of greed and creed, blood and fire.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 4 days ago
Evils draw men together.

Evils draw men together.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 4 days ago
France had endeavoured under the specious...

France had endeavoured under the specious pretext of an enlarged benevolence, to sow the seeds of enmity among nations, and destroy all local attachments, calling them narrow and illiberal-thereby to dissever the people from their governors.

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Speech in the House of Commons on the Traitorous Correspondence Bill (9 April 1793)
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 1 week ago
The life of man is of...

The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.

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On Suicide
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 4 days ago
Our patience will achieve more than...

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 3 days ago
First Shakespeare sonnets seem meaningless; first...

First Shakespeare sonnets seem meaningless; first Bach fugues, a bore; first differential equations, sheer torture. But training changes the nature of our spiritual experiences. In due course, contact with an obscurely beautiful poem, an elaborate piece of counterpoint or of mathematical reasoning, causes us to feel direct intuitions of beauty and significance. It is the same in the moral world.

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Ch. 14, p. 333 [2012 reprint]
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months ago
Aion is a child at play,...

Aion is a child at play, gambling; a child's is the kingship. Telesphorus traverses the dark places of the world, like a star flashing from the deep, leading the way to the gates of the sun and the land of dreams.

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Combining fragments of Heraclitus and Homer
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 6 days ago
Superstition is to religion…

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy, the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

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"Whether it is useful to maintain the people in superstition," Treatise on Toleration, 1763
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 months 4 days ago
The strides of humanity are slow,...

The strides of humanity are slow, they can only be counted in centuries.

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Act II.
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 months 6 days ago
I am much more open about...

I am much more open about categories of gender, and my feminism has been about women's safety from violence, increased literacy, decreased poverty and more equality. I was never against the category of men. "As a Jew, I was taught it was ethically imperative to speak up" in Haaretz.

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24-Feb-10
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 6 days ago
Though the Earth, and all inferior...

Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. Thus no Body has any Right to but himself.

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Second Treatise of Government, Ch. V, sec. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
4 months 6 days ago
The atheist who affects to reason,...

The atheist who affects to reason, and the fanatic who rejects reason, plunge themselves alike into inextricable difficulties. The one perverts the sublime and enlightening study of natural philosophy into a deformity of absurdities by not reasoning to the end. The other loses himself in the obscurity of metaphysical theories, and dishonours the Creator, by treating the study of his works with contempt. The one is a half-rational of whom there is some hope, the other a visionary to whom we must be charitable.

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A Discourse, &c. &c.
Philosophical Maxims
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