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Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 3 weeks ago
You could read Kant by yourself,...

You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with someone else.

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Virginibus Puerisque, Ch. 1. Cornhill Magazine,
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 3 weeks ago
I myself believe that the evidence...

I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.

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Lecture III, Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
I wiped away the weeds and...

I wiped away the weeds and foam, And fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.

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Each and All, st. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 3 weeks ago
Those who need myths are indeed...

Those who need myths are indeed poor. Here the gods serve as beds or resting places as the day races across the sky.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
1 month 1 week ago
An appeal to men's self-sacrificing disposition...

An appeal to men's self-sacrificing disposition and self-renouncing love ought at least to have lost its seductive plausibility when, after an activity of thousands of years, it has left nothing behind but the - misery of today. Why then still fruitlessly expect self-sacrifice to bring us better times? Why not rather hope for them from usurpation? Salvation comes no longer from the giver, the bestower, the loving one, but from the taker, the appropriator (usurper), the owner. Communism, and, consciously, egoism-reviling humanism, still count on love.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 274
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
3 weeks 3 days ago
All grandeur, all power, all subordination...

All grandeur, all power, all subordination to authority rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world and at that very moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple and society disappears.

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"First Dialogue," p. 20
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
1 month 1 week ago
But let the individual man lay...

But let the individual man lay claim to ever so many rights because Man or the concept man 'entitles' him to them, because his being man does it: what do I care for his right and his claim? If he has his right only from Man and does not have it from me, then for me he has no right. His life, for example, counts to me only for what it is worth to me. I respect neither a so-called right of property (or his claim to tangible goods) nor yet his right to the 'sanctuary of his inner nature' (or his right to have the spiritual goods and divinities, his gods, remain un-aggrieved). His goods, the sensuous as well as the spiritual, are mine, and I dispose of them as proprietor, in the measure of my - might.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 219
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks 3 days ago
I can control my thoughts as...

I can control my thoughts as necessary; then how can I be troubled?

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(Hays translation) VII, 2
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
1 month 6 days ago
Come then, and let us celebrate...

Come then, and let us celebrate in the best way we can the anniversary festival which the imperial city is keeping by sacrifices, with unusual splendour. And yet I feel how difficult it is for the human mind even to form a conception of that Sun who is not visible to the sense, if our notion of Him is to be derived from the Sun that is visible; but to express the same in language, however inadequately, is, perhaps, beyond the capability of man! To fitly explain His glory, I am very well aware, is a thing impossible; in lauding it, however, mediocrity seems the highest point to which human eloquence is able to attain.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
We suffer: the external world begins...

We suffer: the external world begins to exist . . . ; we suffer to excess: it vanishes. Pain instigates the world only to unmask its unreality.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 3 weeks ago
Three days later the little princess...

Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrei went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes. "Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to say, and Prince Andrei felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget.

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Bk. IV, Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 4 weeks ago
A world without delight and without...

A world without delight and without affection is a world destitute of value.

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The Scientific Outlook, 1931
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 4 weeks ago
Because people have no thoughts to...

Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!

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Philosophical Maxims
Étienne de La Boétie
Étienne de La Boétie
1 month 3 weeks ago
There is in our souls some...

There is in our souls some native seed of reason, which, if nourished by good counsel and training, flowers into virtue, but which, on the other hand, if unable to resist the vices surrounding it, is stifled and blighted.

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Part 2
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
If there was a God of...

If there was a God of sorrow, he would grow black heavy wings, to soar not for the skies, but for inferno.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 6 days ago
[H]uman nature as encoded in our...

[H]uman nature as encoded in our DNA isn't immutable. Mankind's barbaric track-record to date is an unreliable guide to the future. If Homo sapiens' nastier alleles and their more sinister combinations can be silenced or edited out of the genome, and new improved code-sequences inserted instead, then the pessimists will be confounded. A major discontinuity in the development of life lies ahead. Providentially, we've learned that the DNA-driven world isn't written in God-given proprietary code it would be hubris to tamper with, but in bug-ridden open source amenable to improvement.

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Utopian Pharmacology: Mental Health in the Third Millennium MDMA and Beyond, BLTC Research, last updated 2020
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
People are deeply imbedded in philosophical,...

People are deeply imbedded in philosophical, i.e., grammatical confusions. And to free them presupposes pulling them out of the immensely manifold connections they are caught up in.

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Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 185
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 3 weeks ago
Your crystal? That's silly. Whom do...

Your crystal? That's silly. Whom do you think you are fooling? Come on, everyone knows that I threw the baby out of the window. The crystal is shattered on earth, and I do not care. I am no longer anything but a skin, and my skin does not belong to you.

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Estelle to Inès, Act 1, sc. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
4 months 2 weeks ago
'Tis well to restrain the wicked,...

'Tis well to restrain the wicked, and in any case not to join him in his wrong-doing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
A minimum of unconsciousness is necessary...

A minimum of unconsciousness is necessary if one wants to stay inside history. To act is one thing; to know one is acting is another. When lucidity invests the action, insinuates itself into it, action is undone, and with it, prejudice, whose function consists, precisely, in subordinating, in enslaving consciousness to action. The man who unmasks his fictions renounces his own resources and, in a sense, himself. Consequently, he will accept other fictions which will deny him, since they will not have cropped up from his own depths. No man concerned with his equilibrium may exceed a certain degree of lucidity and analysis.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 1 week ago
Whatever can happen at any time...

Whatever can happen at any time can happen today.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 1 week ago
In the empire of signs, the...

In the empire of signs, the soul, psychology, is erased. There is no soul to infect the holy seriousness of ritual play.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 3 weeks ago
Faced with information overload, we have...

Faced with information overload, we have no alternative but pattern-recognition.

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(p. 132)
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
You won't - I really believe...

You won't - I really believe - get too much out of reading it. Because you won't understand it; the content will seem strange to you. In reality, it isn't strange to you, for the point is ethical. I once wanted to give a few words in the foreword which now actually are not in it, which, however, I'll write to you now because they might be a key for you: I wanted to write that my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one.

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On his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in a letter to Ludwig von Ficker (1919), published in Wittgenstein : Sources and Perspectives (1979) by C. Grant Luckhard
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 3 weeks ago
She with one breath attunes the...

She with one breath attunes the spheres, And also my poor human heart.

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"Inspiration", in An American Anthology, 1900
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks 3 days ago
Of things that are external, happen...

Of things that are external, happen what will to that which can suffer by external accidents. Those things that suffer let them complain themselves, if they will; as for me, as long as I conceive no such thing, that that which is happened is evil, I have no hurt; and it is in my power not to conceive any such thing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 4 weeks ago
Although the most acute judges of...
Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.
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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim
3 weeks 3 days ago
The general form of the total...

The general form of the total conception of ideology is being used by the analyst when he has the courage to subject not just the adversary's point of view but all points of view, including his own, to the ideological analysis.At the present stage of our understanding it is hardly possible to avoid this general formulation of the total conception of ideology, according to which the thought of all parties in all epochs is of an ideological character.

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Philosophical Maxims
Proclus
Proclus
4 months 1 week ago
For this, to draw a right...

For this, to draw a right line from every point, to every point, follows the definition, which says, that a line is the flux of a point, and a right line an indeclinable and inflexible flow.

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Book III. Concerning Petitions and Axioms.
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 4 weeks ago
A sound mind in a sound...

A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.

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Sec. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 months 3 weeks ago
Surely this voice meant our Teacher;...

Surely this voice meant our Teacher; for it is he that can collect the indications which lie scattered on all sides. A singular light kindles in his looks, when at length the high Rune lies before us, and he watches in our eyes whether the star has yet risen upon us, which is to make the Figure visible and intelligible.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 3 weeks ago
Never have so many been manipulated...

Never have so many been manipulated so much by so few.

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Chapter 3 (pp. 19-20)
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 3 weeks ago
There are limits beyond which your...

There are limits beyond which your folly will not carry you. I am glad of that. In fact, I am relieved.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 months 3 weeks ago
We are only puppets, our strings...

We are only puppets, our strings are being pulled by unknown forces.

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Act II.
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 3 weeks ago
The first act by virtue of...

The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society-the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society-this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not "abolished." It dies out.

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Socialism, Utopian and Scientific
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 2 weeks ago
In this initial illimitableness of possibilities...

In this initial illimitableness of possibilities that characterizes one who has no nature there stands out only one fixed, pre-established, and given line by which he may chart his course, only one limit: the past.

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"Man has no nature"
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 3 weeks ago
The practical consequence of such a[n...

The practical consequence of such a[n individualistic] philosophy is the well-known democratic respect for the sacredness of individuality,-is, at any rate, the outward tolerance of whatever is not itself intolerant. These phrases are so familiar that they sound now rather dead in our ears. Once they had a passionate inner meaning. Such a passionate inner meaning they may easily acquire again if the pretension of our nation to inflict its own inner ideals and institutions vi et armis upon Orientals should meet with a resistance as obdurate as so far it has been gallant and spirited. Religiously and philosophically, our ancient national doctrine of live and let live may prove to have a far deeper meaning than our people now seem to imagine it to possess.

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"Preface"
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 3 weeks ago
The Africans had that claim on...

The Africans had that claim on our humanity which could not be resisted, whatever might have been advanced by an hon. gentleman in defence of the property of the planters.

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Speech in the House of Commons (12 May 1789), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVIII (1816), column 98
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 4 days ago
Make your educational laws strict and...

Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 weeks ago
What is all Knowledge too but...

What is all Knowledge too but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials?

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Carlyle, Essays, On History. Quote reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 419-23.
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
3 months 3 weeks ago
Perfectibility is one of the most...

Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.

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Vol. 1, bk. 1 : Of the Powers of Man Considered in his Social Capacity, ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 2 weeks ago
This fighting-shy of every obligation partly...

This fighting-shy of every obligation partly explains the phenomenon, half ridiculous, half disgraceful, Of the setting-up in our days of the platform of "youth" as youth. ... In comic fashion people call themselves "young," because they have heard that youth has more rights than obligations, since it can put off the fulfilment of these latter to the Greek Kalends of maturity. ...[T]he astounding thing at present is that these take it as an effective right precisely in order to claim for themselves all those other rights which only belong to the man who has already done something.

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Chapter XV: We Arrive At The Real Question
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
Every book is a quotation...

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone-quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

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Quotation and Originality
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
I regard it as the irresistible...

I regard it as the irresistible effect of the Copernican astronomy to have made the theological scheme of redemption absolutely incredible.

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Quoted in Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Emerson, the Mind On Fire (Univ. of Calif Press 1995), p. 124
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 day ago
Many who have not....
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Main Content / General
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 month 1 week ago
Do you suppose that God takes...

Do you suppose that God takes himself seriously? I know a Zen master, Joshu Sasaki, who has let it be known that the best form of meditation is to stand up with your hands on your hips and roar with laughter for ten minutes every morning. I have heard of a sophisticated shaman-type fellow who used to cure ringworm on cows just by pointing at the scars and laughing. Truly religious people always make jokes about their religion; their faith is so strong that they can afford it. Much of the secret of life consists in knowing how to laugh, and also how to breathe.

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p. 6
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 weeks ago
In the long run the answer...

In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
4 months 2 weeks ago
Neither art nor wisdom may be...

Neither art nor wisdom may be attained without learning.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 1 day ago
Though the profusion of Government must...

Though the profusion of Government must undoubtedly have retarded the natural progress of England to wealth and improvement, it has not been able to stop it.

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Chapter III.
Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
3 weeks 2 days ago
The scene has thoroughly changed. The...

The scene has thoroughly changed. The six weeks' march to Paris has come world drama. Mass murder has become a monotonous task, and yet the final solution is not one step nearer. Capitalist rule is caught in its own trap, and cannot ban the spirit that it has Gone is the first mad delirium. Gone are the patriotic street demonstrations, the chase after suspicious-looking automobiles; the false telegrams, the cholera-poisoned wells. Gone the mad stories of Russian students who hurl bombs from every bridge of Berlin, or French men flying over Nuremberg; gone the excesses of spy-hunting populace, the singing through, the coffee shops with their patriotic songs; gone the violent mobs, ready to denounce, ready to persecute women, ready to whip themselves into a delirious frenzy over every wild rumor; gone the atmosphere of ritual murder, the Kishinev air that left the policeman at the corner as the only remaining representative of human dignity.

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Ch.1
Philosophical Maxims
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