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Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 2 weeks ago
Dear rulers ... I maintain that...

Dear rulers ... I maintain that the civil authorities are under obligation to compel the people to send their children to school. ... If the government can compel such citizens as are fit for military service to bear spear and rifle, to mount ramparts, and perform other martial duties in time of war, how much more has it a right to compel the people to send their children to school, because in this case we are warring with the devil, whose object it is secretly to exhaust our cities and principalities of their strong men.

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letter to the German rulers (1524), as quoted in The History of Compulsory Education in New England, John William Perrin, 1896
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 1 week ago
Use, do not abuse…

Use, do not abuse; as the wise man commands. I flee Epictetus and Petronius alike. Neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

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"Cinquième discours: sur la nature de plaisir," Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme, 1738
Philosophical Maxims
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
2 months 2 weeks ago
Morality is the beauty…

Morality is the beauty of Philosophy.

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Trattato Terzo, Ch. 15.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
2 months 1 week ago
There as here, passions are the...

There as here, passions are the motive of all action, but they are livelier, more ardent, or merely simpler and purer, thereby assuming a totally different character. All the first movements of nature are good and right.

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First Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
If any ask me what a...

If any ask me what a free Government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so, - and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
In spite of Death, the mark...

In spite of Death, the mark and seal of the parental control, Man is yet free, during his brief years, to examine, to criticise, to know, and in imagination to create. To him alone, in the world with which he is acquainted, this freedom belongs; and in this lies his superiority to the resistless forces that control his outward life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 6 days ago
So much of our time is...

So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.

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Quoted in Simon Brown (ed.) The New England Farmer, vol. 9 (January 1857) p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 1 week ago
When the profits of trade happen...

When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, over-trading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers.

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Chapter I, p. 469.
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 weeks 5 days ago
It was not until the ant...

It was not until the ant and Veig had passed each other that Niall realized that he had been reading the ant's mind. It was a sensation like actually being the ant, as if he had momentarily taken possession of its body. And while he had been inside the ant's body, he had also become aware of all the other ants in the nest. It was a bewildering feeling, as if his mind had shattered into thousands of fragments, yet each fragment remained a coherent part of the whole.

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p. 57
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 1 week ago
It is not for its own...

It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.

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Chapter I, p. 471.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 2 weeks ago
When I play with my cat….

When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?

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Ch. 12 (tr. Donald M. Frame) , tr. David Wills, 2008
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
3 weeks 1 day ago
I see myself immersed in the...

I see myself immersed in the depths of human existence and standing in the face of the ineffable mystery of the world and of all that is. And in that situation, I am made poignantly and burningly aware that the world cannot be self-sufficient, that there is hidden in some still greater depth a mysterious, transcendent meaning. This meaning is called God. Men have not been able to find a loftier name, although they have abused it to the extent of making it almost unutterable. God can be denied only on the surface; but he cannot be denied where human experience reaches down beneath the surface of flat, vapid, commonplace existence.

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As translated in In Love with Eternity : Philosophical Essays and Fragments (2005) by Richard Schain, p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 week ago
When the husk gets separated from...

When the husk gets separated from the kernel, almost all men run after the husk and pay their respects to that. It is only the husk of Christianity that is so bruited and wide spread in this world; the kernel is still the very least and rarest of all things. There is not a single church founded on it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
2 months 1 week ago
As to riots and tumults, let...

As to riots and tumults, let those answer for them, who, by willful misrepresentations, endeavor to excite and promote them; or who seek to stun the sense of the nation, and to lose the great cause of public good in the outrages of a misinformed mob. We take our ground on principles that require no such riotous aid. We have nothing to apprehend from the poor; for we are pleading their cause. And we fear not proud oppression, for we have truth on our side.

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Address and Declaration at a Select Meeting of the Friends of Universal Peace and Liberty (August 20, 1791) p. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 1 week ago
Do you see this egg? With...

Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world. What is it, this egg, before the seed is introduced into it? An insentient mass. And after the seed has been introduced to into it? What is it then? An insentient mass. For what is the seed itself other than a crude and inanimate fluid? How is this mass to make a transition to a different structure, to sentience, to life? Through heat. And what will produce that heat in it? Motion. "Conversation Between D'Alembert and Diderot", as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker, and The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture (2004) by Louis K Dupré, p. 30 Variant translation: See this egg. It is with this that all the schools of theology and all the temples of the earth are to be overturned.

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As quoted in Diderot, Reason and Resonance (1982) by Élisabeth de Fontenay, p. 217
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
6 days ago
Government is violence, Christianity is meekness,...

Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government.

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Letter to Dr. Eugen Heinrich Schmitt (October 12, 1896), translated by Nathan Haskell Dole
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 3 weeks ago
You called and cried out loud...

You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
In the name of national security,...

In the name of national security, the Commission's hearings were held in secret, thereby continuing the policy which has marked the entire course of the case. This prompts my second question: If, as we are told, Oswald was the lone assassin, where is the issue of national security? Indeed, precisely the same question must be put here as was posed in France during the Dreyfus case: If the Government is so certain of its case, why has it conducted all its inquiries in the strictest secrecy? "

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16 Questions on the Assassination" in The Minority of One, ed. M.S. Arnoni (1964-09-06), pp. 6-8
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 days ago
Eternity is best spent under a...

Eternity is best spent under a general anesthetic - which is what is going to happen.

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Interview with Joe Rogan on The Joe Rogan Experience (2019);
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 weeks 6 days ago
The new order contradicts reason so...

The new order contradicts reason so fundamentally that reason does not dare to doubt it. Even the consciousness of oppression fades. The more incommensurate become the concentration of power and the helplessness of the individual, the more difficult for him to penetrate the human origin of his misery.

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p. 44.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 days ago
By virtue of depression, we recall...

By virtue of depression, we recall those misdeeds we buried in the depths of our memory. Depression exhumes our shames.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 days ago
I think of so many people...

I think of so many people who are no more, and I pity them. Yet they are not so much to be pitied, for they have solved every problem, beginning with the problem of death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 3 days ago
The healthy man does not torture...

The healthy man does not torture others-generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

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In Du, May 1941
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 1 week ago
The world is rejuvenated, but as...

The world is rejuvenated, but as Heine so wittily remarked, it was rejuvenated by romanticism to such a degree that it became a baby again.

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Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 weeks 4 days ago
Just as modern mass production requires...

Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
3 weeks 6 days ago
At the parting of ways in...

At the parting of ways in the life-order, where the question is between the new creation or decay, that man will be decisive for new creation who is able on his own initiative to seize the helm and steer a course of his own choosing - even if that course be opposed to the will of the masses. Should the emergence of such persons become impossible a lamentable shipwreck will be inevitable.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 2 days ago
By creating the world market, big...

By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others. Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
4 days ago
War is never anything less than...

War is never anything less than accelerated technological change.

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(p. 102)
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 3 days ago
Why is psychology the youngest of...

Why is psychology the youngest of the empirical sciences? Why have we not long since discovered the unconscious and raised up its treasure-house of eternal images? Simply because we had a religious formula for everything psychic - and one that is far more beautiful and comprehensive than immediate experience. Though the Christian view of the world has paled for many people, the symbolic treasure-rooms of the East are still full of marvels that can nourish for a long time to come the passion for show and new clothes. What is more, these images - be they Christian or Buddhist or what you will - are lovely, mysterious, richly intuitive.

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p. 7-8
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 6 days ago
It is only by risking our...

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

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"Is Life Worth Living?"
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
6 days ago
Despite the fact that the doctors...

Despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink, he recovered.

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[sometimes quoted as "Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered."] Bk. XV, ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 weeks 5 days ago
In fact, we had a number...

In fact, we had a number of extreme leftists and trade unionists among us, and they seemed to take it for granted that we all agreed that the rich must somehow be forced to surrender their ill-gotten gains. Yet there was an air of good humor about their idealism that made me feel they would not be too offended if I admitted that I regard socialists as well-meaning but muddle-headed brigands.

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p. 30
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 6 days ago
I am not much an advocate...

I am not much an advocate for travelling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home? I have been quoted as saying captious things about travel; but I mean to do justice. .... He that does not fill a place at home, cannot abroad. He only goes there to hide his insignificance in a larger crowd. You do not think you will find anything there which you have not seen at home? The stuff of all countries is just the same. Do you suppose there is any country where they do not scald milk-pans, and swaddle the infants, and burn the brushwood, and broil the fish? What is true anywhere is true everywhere. And let him go where he will, he can only find so much beauty or worth as he carries.

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Culture
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
All those instances to be found...

All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.

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No. 1, volume v, p. 286
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
4 weeks 1 day ago
The idea of Christ is much...

The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.

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The Idea of Christ in the Gospels
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 weeks 6 days ago
The disparagement of empirical evidence in...

The disparagement of empirical evidence in favor of a metaphysical world of illusion has its origin in the conflict between the emancipated individual of bourgeois society and his fate within that society.

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p. 138.
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
2 weeks 6 days ago
Open, honest, truth-telling individuals value privacy....

Open, honest, truth-telling individuals value privacy. We all need spaces where we can be alone with thoughts and feelings - where we can experience healthy psychological autonomy and can choose to share when we want to.

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All About Love: New Visions
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 days ago
Only those are happy who never...

Only those are happy who never think or, rather, who only think about life's bare necessities, and to think about such things means not to think at all. True thinking resembles a demon who muddies the spring of life or a sickness which corrupts its roots. To think all the time, to raise questions, to doubt your own destiny, to feel the weariness of living, to be worn out to the point of exhaustion by thoughts and life, to leave behind you, as symbols of your life's drama, a trail of smoke and blood - all this means you are so unhappy that reflection and thinking appear as a curse causing a violent revulsion in you.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 6 days ago
You shall have joy, or you...

You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.

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October 1842
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 weeks 1 day ago
You shall know the truth, and...

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

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8:32
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 6 days ago
Glory - once achieved...
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Main Content / General
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 days ago
Skepticism is the sadism of embittered...

Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 days ago
Melancholy redeems this universe, and yet...

Melancholy redeems this universe, and yet it is melancholy that separates us from it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
4 weeks ago
By freedom he meant a condition...

By freedom he meant a condition in which men were not prevented from choosing both the object and the manner of their worship. For him only a society in which this condition was realised could be called fully human. Its realisation was an ideal which Mill regarded as more precious than life itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 1 week ago
A great deal of capital, which...

A great deal of capital, which appears to-day in the United States without any certificate of birth, was yesterday, in England, the capitalised blood of children.

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Vol. I, Ch. 31, pg. 829.
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 2 weeks ago
No one has yet been found...

No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to compel himself to sweep away all theories and common notions, and to apply the understanding, thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of particulars. Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed.

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Aphorism 97
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 weeks 5 days ago
It has been said of old,...

It has been said of old, all roads lead to Rome. In paraphrased application to the tendencies of our day, it may truly be said that all roads lead to the great social reconstruction. The economic awakening of the workingman, and his realization of the necessity for concerted industrial action; the tendencies of modern education, especially in their application to the free development of the child; the spirit of growing unrest expressed through, and cultivated by, art and literature, all pave the way to the Open Road.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
4 weeks 1 day ago
Loren von Stein thus turned the...

Loren von Stein thus turned the dialectic into an ensemble of objective laws calling for social reform as the adequate solution of all contradictions and neutralized the critical elements of the dialectic.

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P. 388
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 month 4 days ago
Denotation by means of sounds and...

Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word Liberty entire nations.

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Fragment No. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
1 month 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
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