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José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 week 5 days ago
Now, apparently, many men are again...

Now, apparently, many men are again feeling homesick for the herd. They devote themselves passionately to whatever there is left in them of the sheep. They want to march through life together, along the collective path, shoulder to shoulder, wool rubbing wool, and the head down. This is the reason why so many European peoples are looking for a shepherd and a sheep dog.

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p. 170
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 3 weeks ago
This life is worth living, we...

This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it, from the moral point of view.

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"Is Life Worth Living?"
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 3 weeks ago
The immediate aim of the Communists...

The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

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Section 2 paragraph 7.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 3 weeks ago
I say a murder is abstract....

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

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Act 5, sc. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 weeks ago
“What man among you with 100...

“What man among you with 100 sheep, on losing one of them, will not leave the 99 behind in the wilderness and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he has found it, he puts it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he gets home, he calls his friends and his neighbors together, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous ones who have no need of repentance.

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Luke 15: 4-7
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
1 month 3 weeks ago
My philosophical views approach somewhat closely...

My philosophical views approach somewhat closely those of the late Countess of Conway, and hold a middle position between Plato and Democritus, because I hold that all things take place mechanically as Democritus and Descartes contend against the views of Henry More and his followers, and hold too, nevertheless, that everything takes place according to a living principle and according to final causes - all things are full of life and consciousness, contrary to the views of the Atomists.

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Letter to Thomas Burnet (1697), as quoted in Platonism, Aristotelianism and Cabalism in the Philosophy of Leibniz (1938) by Joseph Politella, p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
2 months 1 week ago
There is no order between created...

There is no order between created being and non-being, but there is between created and uncreated being.

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q. 7, art. 9, ad 8
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
1 month 3 weeks ago
The very port and gait of...

The very port and gait of a swan, or turkey, or peacock show the high idea he has entertain'd of himself; and his contempt of all others. This is the more remarkable, that in the two last species of animals, the pride always attends the beauty, and is discover'd in the male only. The vanity and emulation of nightingales in singing have been commonly remark'd [...] All these are evident proofs, that pride and humility are not merely human passions, but extend themselves over the whole animal creation.

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Part 1, Section 12
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
The infliction of cruelty with a...

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

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Ch. 1: The Value of Scepticism
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 3 weeks ago
The spurious axioms of the third...

The spurious axioms of the third kind from conditions proper to the subject whence they are transferred rashly to the object are plentiful, not, as in those of the Second Class, because the only way to the intellectual concept lies through the sensuous data, but because only by aid of the latter can the concept be applied to that which is given by experience, that is, can we know whether something is contained under a certain intellectual concept or not. To this class belongs the threadbare one of the schools: whatever exists contingently does at some time not exist. This spurious principle springs from the poverty of the intellect, having insight frequently into the nominal, rarely into the real, marks of contingency or necessity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is too early to love....

It is too early to love. We will buy the right to do so by shedding blood.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 3 weeks ago
For an author to write as...

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

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The Art of Literature
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 1 week ago
The dominion of bad men is...

The dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater license in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine Scripture treats, it says, For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond-slave.

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IV, 3 Variant translation: The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but — what is worse — the slave of as many masters as he has vices.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months ago
The true Gospel has it that...

The true Gospel has it that we are justified by faith alone, without the deeds of the Law.

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Chapter 2
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
1 month 1 week ago
If evolution is a struggle for...

If evolution is a struggle for survival, why hasn't it ruthlessly eliminated altruists, who seem to increase another's prospects of survival at the cost of their own?

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Chapter 1, The Origins Of Altruism, p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 2 weeks ago
Self-preservation has frequently knuckled under to...

Self-preservation has frequently knuckled under to that tremendous yearning to get even.

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
2 months 5 days ago
Do not mistake yourself by believing...

Do not mistake yourself by believing that your being has something in it more exalted than that of others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 weeks 4 days ago
The reasons for persisting in Being...

The reasons for persisting in Being seem less and less well founded, and our successors will find it easier than we to be rid of such obstinacy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months ago
Virtue refuses facility for her companion...

Virtue refuses facility for her companion ... the easy, gentle, and sloping path that guides the footsteps of a good natural disposition is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

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Ch. 11. Of Cruelty (tr. Donald M. Frame)
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 weeks ago
He that is not with me...

He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.

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Luke 11:23 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 3 weeks ago
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like...

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 3 weeks ago
If a person is stupid, we...

If a person is stupid, we excuse him by saying that he cannot help it; but if we attempted to excuse in precisely the same way the person who is bad, we should be laughed at.

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E. Payne, trans., vol. 2, p. 230
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
2 weeks 5 days ago
Government was intended to suppress injustice,...

Government was intended to suppress injustice, but it offers new occasions and temptations for the commission of it.

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"Summary of Principles" 2.4
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
2 months 6 days ago
Does anyone bathe in a mighty...

Does anyone bathe in a mighty little time? Don't say that he does it ill, but in a mighty little time. Does anyone drink a great quantity of wine? Don't say that he does ill, but that he drinks a great quantity. For, unless you perfectly understand the principle from which anyone acts, how should you know if he acts ill? Thus you will not run the hazard of assenting to any appearances but such as you fully comprehend.

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(45).
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
4 weeks 1 day ago
When we consider the being and...

When we consider the being and substance of that universe in which we are immutably set, we shall discover that neither we ourselves nor any substance doth suffer death; for nothing is in fact diminished in its substance, but all things, wandering through infinite space, undergo change of aspect.

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Introductory Epistle
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 weeks 4 days ago
I long to be free -...

I long to be free - desperately free. Free as the stillborn are free.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
2 months 6 days ago
Yet God hath not only granted...

Yet God hath not only granted these faculties, by which we may bear every event without being depressed or broken by it, but like a good prince and a true father, hath placed their exercise above restraint, compulsion, or hindrance, and wholly within our own control.

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Book I, ch. 6, 40.
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
1 month 3 weeks ago
Let us now consider whether justice...

Let us now consider whether justice requires the toleration of the intolerant, and if so under what conditions. There are a variety of situations in which this question arises. Some political parties in democratic states hold doctrines that commit them to suppress the constitutional liberties whenever they have the power. Again, there are those who reject intellectual freedom but who nevertheless hold positions in the university. It may appear that toleration in these cases is inconsistent with the principles of justice, or at any rate not required by them.

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p. 216
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 weeks ago
"Fact be vertuous, or vicious, as...

Fact be vertuous, or vicious, as Fortune pleaseth.

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The Second Part, Chapter 27, p. 153
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1 month 3 weeks ago
History, is a conscious, self-mediating process...

History, is a conscious, self-mediating process - Spirit emptied out into Time; but this externalization, this kenosis, is equally an externalization of itself; the negative is the negative of itself. ... Thus absorbed in itself, it is sunk in the night of its self-consciousness; but in that night its vanished outer existence is perserved, and this transformed existence - the former one, but now reborn of the Spirit's knowledge - is the new existence, a new world and a new shape of Spirit.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 weeks 4 days ago
The poor maidservant who used to...

The poor maidservant who used to say that she only believed in God when she had a toothache puts all theologians to shame.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
6 months 2 weeks ago
Survive in such a way...

Survive in such a way that you avoid limiting others who are also trying to survive. We all live in limited systems. This is the core of ethics.

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Propositions / General
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 week 2 days ago
Hegel made famous his aphorism that...

Hegel made famous his aphorism that all the rational is real and all the real rational; but there are many of us who, unconvinced by Hegel, continue to believe that the real, the really real, is irrational, that reason builds upon irrationalities. Hegel, a great framer of definitions, attempted with definitions to reconstruct the universe, like that artillery sergeant who said that cannon were made by taking a hole and enclosing it with steel.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
Religions, which condemn the pleasures of...

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

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The New York Herald-Tribune Magazine, 3/6/1938
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 1 day ago
Sir Henry Wotton used to say...

Sir Henry Wotton used to say that critics are like brushers of noblemen's clothes.

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No. 64
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
1 month 3 weeks ago
An honest man nearly always thinks...

An honest man nearly always thinks justly.

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 277.
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 week 6 days ago
The demagogues, impresarios of alteracion, who...

The demagogues, impresarios of alteracion, who have already caused the death of several civilizations, harass men so that they shall not reflect, see to it that they are kept herded together in crowds so that they cannot reconstruct their individuality in the one place where it can be reconstructed, which is in solitude.

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p. 33
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 weeks 4 days ago
It has been a long time...

It has been a long time since philosophers have read men's souls. It is not their task, we are told. Perhaps. But we must not be surprised if they no longer matter much to us.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 3 weeks ago
..Whenever it ceases to be true...

..Whenever it ceases to be true that mankind, as a rule, prefer themselves to others, and those nearest to them to those more remote, from that moment Communism is not only practicable, but the only defensible form of society...

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 weeks 2 days ago
He was not merely a chip...

He was not merely a chip of the old Block, but the old Block itself.

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On Pitt's First Speech (26 February 1781), from Wraxall's Memoirs, First Series, vol. i. p. 342
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 3 weeks ago
According to Christian teachers, the essential...

According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

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Book III, Chapter 8, "The Great Sin"
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 2 weeks ago
For a large class of cases...

For a large class of cases - though not for all - in which we employ the word meaning it can be explained thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.

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§ 43, this has often been quoted as simply: The meaning of a word is its use in the language.
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 3 weeks ago
The great writers to whom the...

The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief.

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Ch. 1: Introductory
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 weeks 1 day ago
It is not as a child...

It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.

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As quoted in Kierkegaard, the Melancholy Dane (1950) by Harold Victor Martin.
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 weeks 4 days ago
The more remote and unreal the...

The more remote and unreal the personal mother is, the more deeply will the son's yearning for her clutch at his soul, awakening that primordial and eternal image of the mother for whose sake everything that embraces, protects, nourishes, and helps assumes maternal form, from the Alma Mater of the university to the personification of cities, countries, sciences and ideals.

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"Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon" (1942) In CW 13: Alchemical Studies P.47
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 week 2 days ago
"The bitterest sorrow that man can...

"The bitterest sorrow that man can know is to aspire to do much and to achieve nothing"... so Herodotus relates that a Persian said to a Theban at a banquet (book ix., chap. xvi.). And it is true. With knowledge and desire we can embrace everything , or almost everything; with the will nothing, or almost nothing. And contemplation is not happiness - no! not if this contemplation implies impotence. And out of this collision between our knowledge and our power pity arises.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
6 days ago
It is forbidden...
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Main Content / General
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 3 weeks ago
Under the ideal measure of values...

Under the ideal measure of values there lurks the hard cash.

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Vol. I, Ch. 3, Section 1, pg. 116.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 3 weeks ago
Ah! Do not judge the gods,...

Ah! Do not judge the gods, young man, they have painful secrets.

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Jupiter, Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 week 2 days ago
Neither is the longing for immortality...

Neither is the longing for immortality saved, but rather dissolved and submerged, by agnosticism, or the doctrine of the unknowable. ...The unknowable, if it is something more than the merely hitherto unknown, is but a purely negative concept, a concept of limitation. And upon this foundation no human feeling can be built up.

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Philosophical Maxims
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