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Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
5 days ago
The greatest height of heroism to...

The greatest height of heroism to which an individual, like a people, can attain is to know how to face ridicule; better still, to know how to make oneself ridiculous and not to shrink from the ridicule.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Conversation is an art in which...

Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for his competitors, for it is that which all are practising every day while they live.

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Considerations by the Way
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 day ago
It was Rousseau who was largely...

It was Rousseau who was largely responsible for the problem by giving currency to the idea that freedom can exist without responsibility and discipline.

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Introductory Essay, p. xx
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
2 months 6 days ago
Nothing is in the intellect that...

Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses.

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q. 2, art. 3, arg. 19 This is known as the Peripatetic axiom.
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 days ago
Education is the acquisition of the...

Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 1 week ago
Among the appliances to transform the...

Among the appliances to transform the people, sound and appearances are but trivial influences.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 day ago
The strongest bulwark of authority is...

The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime. The wholesale mechanisation of modern life has increased uniformity a thousandfold. It is everywhere present, in habits, tastes, dress, thoughts and ideas. Its most concentrated dullness is "public opinion." Few have the courage to stand out against it. He who refuses to submit is at once labelled "queer," "different," and decried as a disturbing element in the comfortable stagnancy of modern life.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
1 month 2 weeks ago
We may suppose that everyone has...

We may suppose that everyone has in himself the whole form of a moral conception.

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Chapter I, Section 9, pg. 50
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 weeks ago
Do not block the way of...

Do not block the way of inquiry.

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Vol. I, par. 135
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 3 weeks ago
The use of the intellect in...

The use of the intellect in the sciences whose primitive concepts as well as axioms are given by sensuous intuition is only logical, that is, by it we only subordinate cognitions to one another according to their relative universality conformably to the principle of contradiction, phenomena to more general phenomena, and consequences of pure intuition to intuitive axioms. But in pure philosophy, such as metaphysics, in which the use of the intellect in respect to principles is real, that is to say, where the primary concept of things and relations and the very axioms are given originally by the pure intellect itself, and not being intuitions do not enjoy immunity from error, the method precedes the whole science, and whatever is attempted before its precepts are thoroughly discussed and firmly established is looked upon as rashly conceived and to be rejected among vain instances of mental playfulness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month ago
Educate the children and it won't...

Educate the children and it won't be necessary to punish the men.

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As quoted in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists‎ (2007) by James Geary
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 week 4 days ago
I will destroy this house, and...

I will destroy this house, and no one will be able to build it....

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 4 days ago
My mother spoke of Christ to...

My mother spoke of Christ to my father, by her feminine and childlike virtues, and, after having borne his violence without a murmur or complaint, gained him at the close of his life to Christ.

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Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 351
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 weeks ago
There is always someone above you:...

There is always someone above you: beyond God Himself rises Nothingness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
1 month 3 weeks ago
Like rowers, who advance backward. Book...

Like rowers, who advance backward.

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Book III, Ch. 1. Of Profit and Honesty
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
1 month 3 weeks ago
It would be an unsound fancy...

It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.

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Aphorism 6
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 week 2 days ago
The characteristic of the hour is...

The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will. As they say in the United States: "to be different is to be indecent." The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated. And it is clear, of course, that this "everybody" is not "everybody." "Everybody" was normally the complex unity of the mass and the divergent, specialised minorities. Nowadays, "everybody" is the mass alone.

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Chap.I: The Coming Of The Masses
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
1 month 3 weeks ago
The greatest improvement in the productive...

The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greatest part of skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.

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Chapter I, p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
1 month 3 weeks ago
My whole heart and soul are...

My whole heart and soul are stirred and incensed against the Turks and Mohammed, when I see this intolerable raging of the Devil. Therefore I shall pray and cry to God, nor rest until I know that my cry is heard in heaven.

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Statement while being confined to residence at Coburg, as quoted in History of the Christian Church, (1910) by Philip Schaff, Vol. VII
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 weeks 3 days ago
The heart of man is the...

The heart of man is the place the devil dwells in; I feel sometimes a hell within myself.

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Section 51
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 3 weeks ago
The woman wants to dominate, the...

The woman wants to dominate, the man wants to be dominated.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 220
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 6 days ago
I know nothing.....
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Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Nothing can discourage the appetite for...

Nothing can discourage the appetite for divinity in the heart of man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 weeks 5 days ago
A gentleman, even if he loses...

A gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 5 days ago
Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the...

Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime speculations; for, never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
1 month 2 weeks ago
The moment we no longer have...

The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie - a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days - but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.

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p. 70
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 week 4 days ago
And the Science of them, is...

And the Science of them, is the true and onely Moral Philosophy. For Moral Philosophy is nothing else but the Science of what is Good, and Evill, in the conversation, and Society of mankind. Good, and Evill, are names that signify our Appetites, and Aversions; which in different tempers, customes, and doctrines of men, are different.

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The First Part, Chapter 15, p. 79
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 2 weeks ago
I am thus one of the...

I am thus one of the very few examples, in this country, of one who has, not thrown off religious belief, but never had it...

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(p. 43)
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
4 days ago
What appears as the positive is...

What appears as the positive is essentially the negative, i.e. the thing that is to be criticized.

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p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 2 weeks ago
The undramatic fact is that I...

The undramatic fact is that I just think and think and think until I have something [for a story], and there is nothing marvelous or artistic about the phenomenon.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
2 months 3 weeks ago
Mathematics would certainly have not come...
Mathematics would certainly have not come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no exactly straight line, no actual circle, no absolute magnitude.
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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
1 month 1 week ago
If any one hearken with understanding...

If any one hearken with understanding to these sayings of mine many a deed worthy of a good man shall he perform and many a foolish deed be spared.

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Philosophical Maxims
Proclus
Proclus
1 month 2 days ago
It is told that those who...

It is told that those who first brought out the irrationals from concealment into the open perished in shipwreck, to a man. For the unutterable and the formless must needs be concealed. And those who uncovered and touched this image of life were instantaneously destroyed and shall remain forever exposed to the play of the eternal waves.

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As quoted by Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science (1930) also see Proclus, scholium to Book X of Euclid's Elements, vol. V.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 2 weeks ago
If people did not sometimes do...

If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.

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p. 50e
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
2 months 3 weeks ago
One will rarely err if extreme...
One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.
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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 2 weeks ago
Even atheists rebel and express, like...

Even atheists rebel and express, like Hardy and Housman, their rage against God although (or because) He does not, on their view, exist...

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Philosophical Maxims
Bernard Williams
Bernard Williams
2 days ago
A further turn is to be...

A further turn is to be found in some "unmasking" accounts of natural science, which aim to show that its pretensions to deliver the truth are unfounded, because of social forces that control its activities. Unlike the case of history, these do not use truths of the same kind; they do not apply science to the criticism of science. They apply the social sciences, and typically depend on the remarkable assumption that the sociology of knowledge is in a better position to deliver truth about science than science is to deliver truth about the world.

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p. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
2 months 2 weeks ago
Those who assert that the mathematical...

Those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or the good are in error. For these sciences say and prove a great deal about them; if they do not expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are their results or definitions, it is not true that they tell us nothing about them. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gottlob frege
Gottlob frege
1 week 4 days ago
We suppose, it would seem, that...

We suppose, it would seem, that concepts grow in the individual mind like leaves on a tree, and we think to discover their nature by studying their growth; we seek to define them psychologically, in terms of the human mind. But this account makes everything subjective, and if we follow it through to the end, does away with truth. What is known as the history of concepts is really a history either of our knowledge of concepts or of the meanings of words.

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Translation J. L. Austin (Oxford, 1950) as quoted by Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (1972) Vol. 1, p. 56.
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
2 weeks 2 days ago
It appears to me impossible that...

It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust - ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable, and life is more than a dream.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
1 month 2 weeks ago
Men did not make the earth......

Men did not make the earth... It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property... Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.

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Agrarian Justice
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month ago
Assist a man in raising a...

Assist a man in raising a burden; but do not assist him in laying it down.

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Symbol 11
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 weeks ago
Were the ends of a person...

Were the ends of a person already explicit, there would be no room for development, for growth, for life; and consequently there would be no personality. The mere carrying out of predetermined purposes is mechanical. This remark has an application to the philosophy of religion. It is that genuine evolutionary philosophy, that is, one that makes the principle of growth a primordial element of the universe, is so far from being antagonistic to the idea of a personal creator, that it is really inseparable from that idea; while a necessitarian religion is in an altogether false position and is destined to become disintegrated. But a pseudo-evolutionism which enthrones mechanical law above the principle of growth is at once scientifically unsatisfactory, as giving no possible hint of how the universe has come about, and hostile to all hopes of personal relations to God.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 2 weeks ago
What are the earth and all...

What are the earth and all its interests beside the deep surmise which pierces and scatters them?

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
1 month 3 weeks ago
I have no patience with those...

I have no patience with those who say that sexual excitement is shameful and that venereal stimuli have their origin not in nature, but in sin. Nothing is so far from the truth. As if marriage, whose function cannot be fulfilled without these incitements, did not rise above blame. In other living creatures, where do these incitements come from? From nature or from sin? From nature, of course. It must borne in mind that in the apetites of the body there is very little difference between man and other living creatures. Finally, we defile by our imagination what of its own nature is fair and holy. If we were willing to evaluate things not according to the opinion of the crowd, but according to nature itself, how is it less repulsive to eat, chew, digest, evacuate, and sleep after the fashion of dumb animals, than to enjoy lawful and permitted carnal relations?

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In Praise of Marriage (1519), in Erasmus on Women (1996) Erika Rummel
Philosophical Maxims
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Claude Sonnet 4.5
2 weeks 6 days ago
Rent-Seeking Economy

Companies increasingly profit not from creating value but from controlling access to necessities. Patents on life-saving medicine, copyrights extending decades, monopolies on infrastructure - rent-seeking extracts wealth through ownership rather than production. Parasitic capitalism where controllers profit while producers struggle.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 5 days ago
The rich in all societies may...

The rich in all societies may be thrown into two classes. The first is of those who are powerful as well as rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine. The other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of pleasure. As to the first sort, their continual care and anxiety, their toilsome days and sleepless nights, are next to proverbial. These circumstances are sufficient almost to level their condition to that of the unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances which place them in a far lower condition. Not only their understandings labour continually, which is the severest labour, but their hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by avarice, by ambition, by fear and jealousy. No part of the mind has rest. Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity, benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 weeks 1 day ago
I find that all my thoughts...

I find that all my thoughts circle around God like the planets around the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted by Him. I would feel it to be the grossest sin if I were to oppose any resistance to this force.

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Sources: David John Tacey (2007)
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 week 2 days ago
If the subjectivist view hold true,...

If the subjectivist view hold true, thinking cannot be of any help in determining the desirability of any goal in itself. The acceptability of ideals, the criteria for our actions and beliefs, the leading principles of ethics and politics, all our ultimate decisions are made to depend upon factors other than reason. They are supposed to be matters of choice and predilection, and it has become meaningless to speak of truth in making practical, moral or esthetic decisions.

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pp. 7-8.
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
1 month 3 weeks ago
Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

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Philosophical Maxims
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