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William James
William James
1 month 3 weeks ago
The union of the mathematician with...

The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.

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Ch. 11 - Clifford's Lectures and Essays, 1879
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Can one be a saint without...

Can one be a saint without God?, that's the problem, in fact the only problem, I'm up against today.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
1 month 3 weeks ago
Why do I think that we,...

Why do I think that we, the intellectuals, are able to help? Simply because we, the intellectuals, have done the most terrible harm for thousands of years. Mass murder in the name of an idea, a doctrine, a theory, a religion - that is all our doing, our invention: the invention of the intellectuals. If only we would stop setting man against man - often with the best intentions - much would be gained. Nobody can say that it is impossible for us to stop doing this.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 2 weeks 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
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
2 weeks 2 days ago
The prophet is appointed to oppose...

The prophet is appointed to oppose the king, and even more: history.

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BBC radio broadcast (1962), as quoted in The Great Thoughts (1984) by George Seldes
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 3 weeks ago
He who is in love is...

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

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The Method of Nature, 1841
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 weeks 5 days ago
The power of discretionary disqualification by...

The power of discretionary disqualification by one law of Parliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of the Civil List by another law of Parliament, if suffered to pass unnoticed, must establish such a fund of rewards and terrors as will make Parliament the best appendage and support of arbitrary power that ever was invented by the wit of man. This is felt. The quarrel is begun between the Representatives and the People. The Court Faction have at length committed them. In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed, and the boldest staggered. The circumstances are in a great measure new. We have hardly any land-marks from the wisdom of our ancestors, to guide us. At best we can only follow the spirit of their proceeding in other cases.

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Volume i, p. 516
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 3 weeks ago
Where we find a difficulty we...

Where we find a difficulty we may always expect that a discovery awaits us. Where there is cover we hope for game.

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Reflections on the Psalms (1958), ch. III: Cursings
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
1 week 3 days ago
The process begins with the individual...

The process begins with the individual woman's acceptance that American women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist and sexist, in varying degrees, and that labeling ourselves feminists does not change the fact that we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 5 days ago
Truth will sooner come out from...

Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion.

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Aphorism 20
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
2 months 5 days ago
Animals only follow their natural instincts;...

Animals only follow their natural instincts; but man, unless he has experienced the influence of learning and philosophy, is at the mercy of impulses that are worse than those of a wild beast. There is no beast more savage and dangerous than a human being who is swept along by the passions of ambition, greed, anger, envy, extravagance, and sensuality.

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Translated by Beert C. Verstraete as On Education for Children, in The Erasmus Reader (University of Toronto Press: 1990), p. 73
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 week 2 days ago
Logos is powerless without the force...

Logos is powerless without the force of eros.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
2 months 3 weeks ago
Such was the vast power which...

Such was the vast power which the god settled in the lost island of Atlantis; and this he afterwards directed against our land for the following reasons, as tradition tells: For many generations, as long as the divine nature lasted in them, they were obedient to the laws, and well-affectioned towards the god, whose seed they were; for they possessed true and in every way great spirits, uniting gentleness with wisdom in the various chances of life, and in their intercourse with one another.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 3 weeks ago
We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft...

We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox.

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Prospects
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 week 2 days ago
Thinking is an expedition into quietness.

Thinking is an expedition into quietness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 4 weeks ago
...happiness is not an ideal of...

...happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination, resting solely on empirical grounds.

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Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics (1785), Second Section.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
1 month 2 weeks ago
Eventually, I believe, current attempts to...

Eventually, I believe, current attempts to understand the mind by analogy with man-made computers that can perform superbly some of the same external tasks as conscious beings will be recognized as a gigantic waste of time.

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p. 16.
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 weeks 2 days ago
Notwithstanding their attacks on the basic...

Notwithstanding their attacks on the basic conception of rationalism, on synthetic a priori judgments, that is, material propositions that cannot be contradicted by any experience, the empiricist posits the forms of being as constant.

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p. 146.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
1 month 4 weeks 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
Cisero
Cisero
2 months 1 week ago
Force overcome by force.

Force overcome by force.

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Pro Milone, Chapter XI, section 30 Variant translation: Violence conquered by violence.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 1 day ago
The state of health is a...

The state of health is a state of nonsensation, even of nonreality. As soon as we cease to suffer, we cease to exist.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
2 weeks 2 days ago
The philosophical anthropologist ... can know...

The philosophical anthropologist ... can know the wholeness of the person and through it the wholeness of man only when he does not leave his subjectivity out and does not remain an untouched observer.

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p. 148
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 week 2 days ago
We might liken the 'two selves'...

We might liken the 'two selves' to Laurel and Hardy. Ollie is the objective mind, 'you'. Stan is the subjective mind, the 'hidden you'. But Stan happens to be in control of your energy supply. So if you wake up feeling low and discouraged, you (Ollie) tend to transmit your depression to Stan, who fails to send you energy, which makes you feel lower than ever. This vicious circle is the real cause of most mental illness.

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p. 121
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 3 weeks ago
There is a physical relation between...

There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities.

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Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 4, pg. 83.
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
1 week 4 days ago
Impulse, subjectivity and profanation, the old...

Impulse, subjectivity and profanation, the old adversaries of materialistic alienation, now succumb to it. ... The representatives of the opposition to the authoritarian schema become witnesses to the authority of commercial success. ... In the service of success they renounce that insubordinate character which was theirs.

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p. 273
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 3 days ago
It is an unsufferable blasphemy to...

It is an unsufferable blasphemy to reject the public ministry or to say that people can become holy without sermons and Church. This involves a destruction of the Church and rebellion against ecclesiastical order; such upheavals must be warded off and punished like all other revolts.

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In Luther, Hartmann Grisar, 1915, London, Kegan Paul, Trench, vol. 4, p. 126,
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 week 2 days ago
Rituals are symbolic acts. They represent,...

Rituals are symbolic acts. They represent, and pass on, the values and orders on which a community is based. They bring forth a community without communication; today, however, communication without community prevails.

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Philosophical Maxims
Avicenna
Avicenna
2 months 1 week ago
The knowledge of anything, since all...

The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes. Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health. And because health and sickness and their causes are sometimes manifest, and sometimes hidden and not to be comprehended except by the study of symptoms, we must also study the symptoms of health and disease. Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials. Of these causes there are four kinds: material, efficient, formal, and final.

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Philosophical Maxims
Antisthenes
Antisthenes
1 month 2 weeks ago
Virtue is the same…

Virtue is the same for a man and for a woman.

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§ 5
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 3 weeks ago
I am an atheist, out and...

I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 3 weeks ago
They made me take cod liver...

They made me take cod liver oil: that is the height of luxury: a medicine to make you hungry while the others, in the street, would have sold themselves for a beefsteak. I saw them passing my window with their signs: "Give me bread".

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Act 3, sc. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 weeks ago
The class of big capitalists, who,...

The class of big capitalists, who, in all civilized countries, are already in almost exclusive possession of all the means of subsistance and of the instruments (machines, factories) and materials necessary for the production of the means of subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 2 weeks ago
Virtue (or the man of...

Virtue (or the man of virtue) is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.

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Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
2 months 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
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 weeks 5 days ago
The men of England - the...

The men of England - the men, I mean of light and leading in England.

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Volume iii, p. 365
Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
1 month 4 weeks ago
In looking over the catalogue of...

In looking over the catalogue of human actions (says a partizan of this principle) in order to determine which of them are to be marked with the seal of disapprobation, you need but to take counsel of your own feelings: whatever you find in yourself a propensity to condemn, is wrong for that very reason. For the same reason it is also meet for punishment: in what proportion it is adverse to utility, or whether it be adverse to utility at all, is a matter that makes no difference. In that same proportion also is it meet for punishment: if you hate much, punish much: if you hate little, punish little: punish as you hate. If you hate not at all, punish not at all: the fine feelings of the soul are not to be overborne and tyrannized by the harsh and rugged dictates of political utility.

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Ch. 2: Of Principles Adverse to That of Utility
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 week 2 days ago
Jung believed that he was proceeding...

Jung believed that he was proceeding scientifically, but most Freudians remain convinced that he was inventing his own underground realm, rather as Tolkien invented Middle Earth. There is at least an element of truth in this view.

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p. 126
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 days ago
A little folly is desirable in...

A little folly is desirable in him that will not be guilty of stupidity.

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Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
1 month 3 weeks ago
Agriculture is now a motorized food...

Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs.

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Four Lectures on Technology
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 week 5 days ago
Everything in me that conspires to...

Everything in me that conspires to break the unity and continuity of my life conspires to destroy me and consequently to destroy itself. Every individual in a people who conspires to break the spiritual unity and continuity of that people tends to destroy it and to destroy himself as a part of that people.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 3 weeks ago
I am as desirous of being...

I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
2 weeks 3 days ago
All forms of tampering with human...

All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 2 days ago
We can pool...
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Main Content / General
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 4 weeks ago
The more one presupposes that his...

The more one presupposes that his own power will suffice him to realize what he desires the more practical is that desire. When I treat a man contemptuously, I can inspire him with no practical desire to appreciate my grounds of truth. When I treat any one as worthless, I can inspire him with no desire to do right.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 15
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
All the time that he can...

All the time that he can spare from the adornment of his person, he devotes to the neglect of his duties.

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Of Sir Richard Jebb, Some Cambridge Dons of the Nineties, 1956
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 weeks 4 days ago
A naturall foole that could never...

A naturall foole that could never learn by heart the order of numerall words, as one, two, and three, may observe every stroak of the Clock, and nod to it, or say one, one, one; but can never know what houre it strikes.

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The First Part, Chapter 4, p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 3 weeks ago
But, in my state of mind,...

But, in my state of mind, this appearance of superiority to illusion added to the effect which Bentham's doctrines produced on me, by heightening the impression of mental power, and the vista of improvement which he did open was sufficiently large and brilliant to light up my life, as well as to give a definite shape to my aspirations.

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(p. 67)
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 3 weeks ago
You have already grasped that Sisyphus...

You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth. Nothing is told us about Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 week 4 days ago
Celui qui ignore à quel point...

He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss. The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate.

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p. 192
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
1 month 1 week ago
There were two brothers called Both...

There were two brothers called Both and Either; perceiving Either was a good, understanding, busy fellow, and Both a silly fellow and good for little, Philip said, "Either is both, and Both is neither."

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35 Philip
Philosophical Maxims
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