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Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 days ago
As if our birth had at...

As if our birth had at first sundered things, and we had been thrust up through into nature like a wedge, and not till the wound heals and the scar disappears, do we begin to discover where we are, and that nature is one and continuous everywhere.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 week 4 days ago
No amount of happiness enjoyed by...

No amount of happiness enjoyed by some organisms can notionally justify the indescribable horrors of Auschwitz. [...] Nor can the fun and games outweigh the sporadic frightfulness of pain and despair that occurs every second of every day. For there's nothing inherently wrong with non-sentience or [...] non-existence; whereas there is something frightfully and self-intimatingly wrong with suffering.

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2.7 Why Be Negative?
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
2 months 3 weeks ago
... our maturation has consisted in...

... our maturation has consisted in the gradual realization that, if we can rely on one another, we need not rely on anything else. In religious terms, this is the Feuerbachian thesis that God is just a projection of the best, and sometimes the worst, of humanity. In philosophical terms, it is the thesis that anything that talk of objectivity can do to make our practices intelligible can be done equally well by talk of intersubjectivity.

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"John Searle on Realism and Relativism." Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (1998).
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 2 days ago
The roots of education ... are...

The roots of education ... are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 4 days ago
No power can maintain itself if...
No power can maintain itself if only hypocrites represent it.
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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 4 days ago
This is how one puts an...

This is how one puts an end to totality. If all information can be found in each of its parts, the whole loses its meaning. It is also the end of the body, of this singularity called body, whose secret is precisely that it cannot be segmented into additional cells, that it is an indivisible configuration, to which its sexuation is witness (paradox: cloning will fabricate sexed beings in perpetuity, since they are similar to their model, whereas thereby sex becomes useless-but precisely sex is not a function, it is what makes a body a body, it is what exceeds all the parts, all the diverse functions of this body). Sex (or death: in this sense it is the same thing) is what exceeds all information that can be collected on a body. Well, where is all this information collected? In the genetic formula. This is why it must necessarily want to forge a path of autonomous reproduction, independent of sexuality and of death.

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"Clone Story," p. 97
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 1 day ago
"They have an engine called the...

"They have an engine called the Press whereby the people are deceived."

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Ch. 13 : They Have Pulled Down Deep Heaven on Their Heads
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 days ago
It was his peculiar doctrine that...

It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him. They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas
1 month 3 weeks ago
When ethics thus moves into the...

When ethics thus moves into the domain of politics and becomes morality, the possibility of violence appears because of the threat of the application of such absolutist forms of thought. Further, although the moral agent must remain free in order to avoid the totalizing domination of the state, morality must still be grounded in the ethical relation of the face-to-face.

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Steven Bindeman, Levinas: The Face of Otherness and the Ethics of Therapy
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
1 month 1 week ago
The time is come when women...

The time is come when women must do something more than the "domestic hearth," which means nursing the infants, keeping a pretty house, having a good dinner and an entertaining party.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 weeks ago
If death is as horrible as...

If death is as horrible as is claimed, how is it that after the passage of a certain period of time we consider happy any being, friend or enemy, who has ceased to live?

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 3 weeks ago
Once a word….

Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.

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Book I, epistle xviii, line 71
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 4 days ago
The problem of establishing a perfect...

The problem of establishing a perfect civic constitution is dependent upon the problem of a lawful external relation among states and cannot be solved without a solution of the latter problem.

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Seventh Thesis
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
1 month 5 days ago
But it is not to be...

But it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions: since the Comets range over all parts of the heavens, in very eccentric orbits. For by that kind of motion they pass easily through the orbs of the Planets, and with great rapidity; and in their aphelions, where they move the slowest, and are detain'd the longest, they recede to the greatest distances from each other, and thence suffer the least disturbance from their mutual attractions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
1 month 3 weeks ago
I cannot escape the objection that...

I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment.

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An Introduction to Metaphysics (1903), translated by T. E. Hulme. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1912, p. 44
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 4 days ago
Every tradition grows ever more venerable
Every tradition grows ever more venerable — the more remote its origin, the more confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and inspires awe.
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Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
3 months 5 days ago
Nature offers nothing that can be...

Nature offers nothing that can be called this man's rather than another's ; but, under nature, everything belongs to all - that is, they have authority to claim it for themselves. But, under dominion, where it is by common law determined what belongs to this man, and what to that, he is called just who has a constant will to render to every man his own, but he, unjust who strives, on the contrary, to make his own that which belongs to another.

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Ch. 2, Of Natural Right
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Seek after the good, and with...

Seek after the good, and with much toil shall ye find it; the evil turns up of itself without your seeking it.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 3 days ago
I believe in...
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Main Content / General
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 2 weeks ago
A race preserves its vigour so...

A race preserves its vigour so long as it harbours a real contrast between what has been and what may be, and so long as it is nerved by the vigour to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure, civilization is in full decay.

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p. 360.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 days ago
He is great who is what...

He is great who is what he is from Nature, and who never reminds us of others.

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Uses of Great Men
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
1 month 4 weeks ago
We are firmly convinced that the...

We are firmly convinced that the most imperfect republic is a thousand times better than the most enlightened monarchy. In a republic, there are at least brief periods when the people, while continually exploited, is not oppressed; in the monarchies, oppression is constant. The democratic regime also lifts the masses up gradually to participation in public life--something the monarchy never does. Nevertheless, while we prefer the republic, we must recognise and proclaim that whatever the form of government may be, so long as human society continues to be divided into different classes as a result of the hereditary inequality of occupations, of wealth, of education, and of rights, there will always be a class-restricted government and the inevitable exploitation of the majorities by the minorities. The State is nothing but this domination and this exploitation, well regulated and systematised.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 3 weeks ago
The way you use the word...

The way you use the word "God" does not show whom you mean - but, rather, what you mean.

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p. 50e
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 1 day ago
Real culture lives by sympathies and...

Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdain - under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.

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The Social Value of the College-Bred
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 1 week ago
One is rarely an impulsive innovator...

One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind.

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K 51
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 4 days ago
This is that which I think...

This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in; those who have read of everything, are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections ; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.

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As quoted in "Hand Book : Caution and Counsels" in The Common School Journal Vol. 5, No. 24 (15 December 1843) by Horace Mann, p. 371
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 6 days ago
We do not know nature...

We do not know nature; causes hidden in her breast might have produced everything. In your turn, observe the polyp of Trembley: does it not contain in itself the causes which bring about regeneration? Why then would it be absurd to think that there are physical causes by reason of which everything has been made, and to which the whole chain of this vast universe is so necessarily bound and held that, nothing which happens, could have failed to happen,-causes, of which we are so invincibly ignorant that we have had recourse to a God, who, as some aver, is not so much as a logical entity? Thus to destroy chance is not to prove the existence of a supreme being, since there may be some other thing which is neither chance nor God-I mean, nature. It follows that the study of nature can make only unbelievers; and the way of thinking of all its more successful investigators proves this.

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As quoted by Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Man a Machine (1747) Tr. Gertrude Carman Bussey
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 2 days ago
Every art, and every system, and...

Every art, and every system, and in like manner every action and purpose aims, it is thought, at some good; for which reason a common and by no means a bad description of the good is, that at which all things aim.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
3 months 3 weeks ago
A wise man, who puts himself...

A wise man, who puts himself under the government of reason, will be able to receive an injury with calmness, and to treat the person who committed it with lenity; for he will rank injuries among the casual events of life, and will prudently reflect that he can no more stop the natural current of human passions, than he can curb the stormy winds.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
3 months 2 days ago
What the history of Philosophy shows...

What the history of Philosophy shows us is a succession of noble minds, a gallery of heroes of thought, who, by the power of reason, have penetrated into the being of things, of nature and of spirit, into the Being of God, and have won for us by their labours the highest treasure, the treasure of reasoned knowledge.

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Introduction p. 1 Lectures on the history of philosophy, Translated from German by E. S. Haldane in Three Volumes (1892-96) full text
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 days ago
I hear beyond the range of...

I hear beyond the range of sound, I see beyond the range of sight,New earths and skies and seas around, And in my day the sun doth pale his light.

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"Inspiration", in An American Anthology, 1900
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 weeks ago
If you don't want to explode...

If you don't want to explode with rage, leave your memory alone, abstain from burrowing there.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 3 weeks ago
I do not open up...

I do not open up the truth to one who is not eager to get knowledge, nor help out any one who is not anxious to explain himself. When I have presented one corner of a subject to any one, and he cannot from it learn the other three, I do not repeat my lesson.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 4 days ago
Contemplating the universe, the whole system...

Contemplating the universe, the whole system of creation, in this point of light, we shall discover, that all that which is called natural philosophy is properly a divine study- It is the study of God through his works - It is the best study, by which we can arrive at a knowledge of the existence, and the only one by which we can gain a glimpse of his perfection. Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is?

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Search not written or printed books, but the Scripture called the Creation. A Discourse, &c. &c.
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 2 weeks ago
In the root of the word...

In the root of the word "faith" itself... there is implicit the idea of confidence, of surrender to the will of another, to a person. Confidence is placed only in persons. We trust in Providence, which we perceive as something personal and conscious, not in Fate, which is something impersonal. And thus it is in the person who tells us the truth, in the person that gives us hope, that we believe, not directly or immediately in truth itself or in hope itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months ago
It is wrong to think that...

It is wrong to think that belief in freedom always leads to victory; we must always be prepared for it to lead to defeat. If we choose freedom, then we must be prepared to perish along with it. Poland fought for freedom as no other country did. The Czech nation was prepared to fight for its freedom in 1938; it was not lack of courage that sealed its fate. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 - the work of young people with nothing to lose but their chains - triumphed and then ended in failure. ... Democracy and freedom do not guarantee the millennium. No, we do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things - and above all on ourselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
Avicenna
Avicenna
3 months 2 weeks ago
The world is divided into men...

The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 2 weeks ago
Without doubt, if we are to...

Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system.

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Pt. II, ch. 10, sec. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
2 months 3 weeks 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
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 1 day ago
There can be only one permanent...

There can be only one permanent revolution - a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.

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"Three Methods Of Reform" in Pamphlets : Translated from the Russian (1900) as translated by Aylmer Maude, p. 29
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Sexual activity is driven by the...

Sexual activity is driven by the same aims and motives as reading poetry or listening to music: to escape the limitations imposed by the need for particularity in the consciousness.

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p. 75
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 days ago
The arrogance of age must submit...

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.

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Letter to Frances Burney
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 4 days ago
Metaphysics has as the proper object...

Metaphysics has as the proper object of its enquiries three ideas only: God, freedom, and immortality.

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B 395
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 4 days ago
Giving then to matter all the...

Giving then to matter all the properties which philosophy knows it has, or all that atheism ascribes to it, and can prove, and even supposing matter to be eternal, it will not account for the system of the universe or of the solar system, because it will not account for motion, and it is motion that preserves it. When, therefore, we discover a circumstance of such immense importance, that without it the universe could not exist, and for which neither matter, nor any, nor all, the properties of matter can account, we are by necessity forced into the rational and comfortable belief of the existence of a cause superior to matter, and that cause man calls, God.

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A Discourse, &c. &c.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 4 days ago
Those who used to sacrifice animals...

Those who used to sacrifice animals did not take them for beasts. And even the Middle Ages, which condemned and punished them in due form, was in this way much closer to them than we are, we who are filled with horror at this practice. They held them to be guilty: which was a way of honoring them. We take them for nothing, and it is on this basis that we are "human" with them. We no longer sacrifice them, we no longer punish them, and we are proud of it, but it is simply that we have domesticated them, worse: that we have made of them a racially inferior world, no longer even worthy of our justice, but only of our affection and social charity, no longer worthy of punishment and of death, but only of experimentation and extermination like meat from the butchery.

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"The Animals: Territory and Metamorphoses," pp. 134-135
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 2 weeks ago
The immeasurable beauty of life is...

The immeasurable beauty of life is a very fine thing to write about, and there are, indeed, some who resign themselves to accept it and accept it as it is, and even some who would persuade us that there is no problem in the "trap." But it has been said by Calderón that "to seek to persuade a man that the misfortunes which he suffers are not misfortunes, does not console him for them, but it is another misfortune in addition." And furthermore, "only the heart can speak to the heart," as Fray Diego de Estella said.

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(Vanidad del Mundo, cap. xxi.)
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 1 week ago
He was then in his fifty-fourth...

He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards.

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B 30
Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
1 month 2 weeks ago
There is no getting around authority...

There is no getting around authority and power, and no getting around the intellectual's relationship to them. How does the intellectual address authority: as a professional supplicant or as its unrewarded, amateurish conscience?

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p. 83
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 weeks ago
Anyone can escape into sleep, we...

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 weeks 3 days ago
Within the last fifty years, the...

Within the last fifty years, the extraordinary growth of every department of physical science has spread among us mental food of so nutritious and stimulating a character that a new ecdysis seems imminent.

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Ch.2, p. 73
Philosophical Maxims
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