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Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
Boredom is connected naturally with time,...

Boredom is connected naturally with time, with the horror of time, with the experience and the consciousness of time. Those who are not aware of time do not become bored. Basically life is only possible if one is not aware of time. If one should happen to want to experience consciously one of those moments that pass, one would be lost; life would become unbearable.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Skepticism is slow suicide. p. 240

Skepticism is slow suicide.

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p. 240
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 4 days ago
For a desperate disease a desperate...

For a desperate disease a desperate cure.

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Book II, Ch. 3. The Custom of the Isle of Cea
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
1 month 4 days ago
A few years ago I had...

A few years ago I had occasion to visit Peru, and I got to know a fine philosopher and a truly wonderful human being-Francisco Miro Casada. Miro Casada has been an idealist all his life, while being, at the same time, a man of great experience (a former member of several governments and a former Ambassador to France). I found him a man who represents the social democratic vision in its purest form. Talking to him, and to my other friends in Peru (who represented quite a spectrum of political opinion), I heard something that was summed up in a remark he, Miro Casada, made to me, "Whenever you have a Republican president, we get a wave of military dictatorships in Latin America".

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How Not to Solve Ethical Problems
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks 5 days ago
While imprisoned in the shed Pierre...

While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth- that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together....

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Bk. XIV, ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Plotinus
Plotinus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Withdraw into yourself and look. And...

Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer. ... Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one glow or beauty and never cease chiseling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of virtue.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks 5 days ago
The only significance of life consists...

The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us. Chapter XII, Conclusion-Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand Variant translation: The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 3 weeks ago
The aim of the book is...

The aim of the book is to set a limit to thought, or rather - not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to set a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought). It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be set, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 1 week ago
Charity is no substitute for justice...

Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.

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As quoted in Majority of One (1957) by Sydney J. Harris, p. 283
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
1 month 3 weeks ago
In England ... everything becomes professional...

In England ... everything becomes professional ... even the rogues of that island are pedants.

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"Selected Aphorisms from the Lyceum (1797)"
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 weeks 1 day ago
You could give Aristotle a tutorial....

You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world, you also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 6 days ago
A good means to discovery is...

A good means to discovery is to take away certain parts of a system to find out how the rest behaves.

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) edited by Alan Lindsay Mackay, p. 154
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 3 weeks ago
""You do not love the mind...

""You do not love the mind of your race, nor the body. Any kind of creature will please you if only it is begotten by your kind as they now are. It seems to me, Thick One, what you really love is no completed creature but the very seed itself: for that is all that is left".

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Oyarsa
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
A living dog is better than...

A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

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pp. 366-67
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 1 week ago
Every religious practice is an exercise...

Every religious practice is an exercise in attention. A temple is the highest degree of attention.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
Not content with real sufferings, the...

Not content with real sufferings, the anxious man imposes imaginary ones on himself; he is a being for whom unreality exists, must exist; otherwise where would he obtain the ration of torment his nature demands?

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
Under a government which imprisons any...

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison... the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honor.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 4 weeks ago
If man in the state of...

If man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no body, why will he part with his freedom, this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and control of any other power?

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Second Treatise of Government, Ch. IX, sec. 123
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 1 week ago
If science is not to degenerate...

If science is not to degenerate into a medley of ad hoc hypotheses, it must become philosophical and must enter upon a thorough criticism of its own foundations.

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Ch. 1: "The Origins of Modern Science", p. 24
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months ago
When I endeavour to examine my...

When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour to pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is evident that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were, into two persons; and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from that other I, the person whose conduct is examined into and judged of.

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Chap. I.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 3 weeks ago
He kept the middle way, that's...

He kept the middle way, that's all: he was the type of man for whom one has an affection of the mild but steady order - which is the kind that wears best.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 2 weeks ago
The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed...

The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.

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E. Jephcott, trans., p. 17.
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
Just now
You can't satisfy everybody; especially if...

You can't satisfy everybody; especially if there are those who will be dissatisfied unless not everybody is satisfied.

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Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework as Utopian Common Ground, p. 320
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week ago
In his arms...
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Main Content / General
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
2 months 4 weeks ago
Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure-Such...

Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure-Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.Such pleasures seek if private be thy end:If it be public, wide let them extend.Such pains avoid, whichever be thy view:If pains must come, let them extend to few.

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Ch. 4: Value of a Lot of Pleasure or Pain, How to be Measured
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
1 month 1 week ago
The sick individual finds himself at...

The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation; in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society - and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic. In the context of this study the crucial question is whether the hypothesis of a quasi-autistic or of low-grade schizophrenic disturbance would help us to explain some of the violence spreading today.

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p. 395
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
2 months 2 weeks ago
Being summoned by the Athenians out...

Being summoned by the Athenians out of Sicily to plead for his life, Alcibiades absconded, saying that that criminal was a fool who studied a defence when he might fly for it.

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51 Alcibiades
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 4 weeks ago
The liar is a person who...
The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real. He says, for example, "I am rich," when the proper designation for his condition would be "poor." He misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him. What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined.
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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Men love to wonder, and that...

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science. 

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Works and Days;
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 3 weeks ago
These numerous points at which money...

These numerous points at which money is withdrawn from circulation and accumulated in numerous individual hoards or potential money-capitals appears as so many obstacles to circulation, because they immobilise the money and deprive it of its capacity to circulate for a certain time.

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Vol. II, Ch. XXI, p. 497.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 4 days ago
There is no pleasure to me...

There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
2 months 1 week ago
Tell not abroad what thou intendest...

Tell not abroad what thou intendest to do; for if thou speed not, thou shalt be mocked!

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 2 weeks ago
Who is my mother? and who...

Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.

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12:48-50 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 day ago
The main business of religions is...

The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality.

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Book One, Chapter V.
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 2 weeks ago
History is nothing but assisted and...

History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory. It might almost be said to be no science at all, if memory and faith in memory were not what science necessarily rest on. In order to sift evidence we must rely on some witness, and we must trust experience before we proceed to expand it. The line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support knowledge is impossible to draw. Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others, we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe.

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Ch. 2 "History"
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 3 weeks ago
The bourgeoisie ... lets him have...

The bourgeoisie ... lets him have the appearance of acting from a free choice, of making a contract with free, unconstrained consent, as a responsible agent who has attained his majority. Fine freedom, where the proletarian has no other choice than that of either accepting the conditions which the bourgeoisie offers him, or of starving, of freezing to death, of sleeping naked among the beasts of the forests!

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p. 112
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
3 months 1 week ago
What would you say of that...

What would you say of that man who was made king by the error of the people, if he had so far forgotten his natural condition as to imagine that this kingdom was due to him, that he deserved it, and that it belonged to him of right? You would marvel at his stupidity and folly. But is there less in the people of rank who live in so strange a forgetfulness of their natural condition?

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 2 weeks ago
Every plant, which my heavenly Father...

Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

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15:13-14 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
3 months 2 weeks ago
Natural inclinations are present in things...

Natural inclinations are present in things from God, who moves all things. So it is impossible for the natural inclinations of a species to be toward evil in itself. But there is in all perfect animals a natural inclination toward carnal union. Therefore it is impossible for carnal union to be evil in itself.

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III, 126, 3
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 3 weeks ago
The word "God," so "capitalised" (as...

The word "God," so "capitalised" (as we Americans say), is the definable proper name, signifying Ens necessarium; in my belief Really creator of all three Universes of Experience. I, Ens necessarium is a latin expression which signifies "Necessary being, necessary entity"

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Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
4 weeks 1 day ago
In many cases it is a...

In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y; and so on.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 3 weeks ago
Don't say: "They must have something...

Don't say: "They must have something in common, or they would not be called 'games'" but look and see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them, you won't see something that is common to all, but similarities, affinities, and a whole series of them at that.

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To repeat: don't think, but look! § 66
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
2 months 2 weeks ago
Aristodemus, a friend of Antigonus, supposed...

Aristodemus, a friend of Antigonus, supposed to be a cook's son, advised him to moderate his gifts and expenses. "Thy words," said he, "Aristodemus, smell of the apron."

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44 Antigonus I
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 4 weeks ago
Every true thinker for himself is...

Every true thinker for himself is so far like a monarch; he is absolute, and recognises nobody above him. His judgments, like the decrees of a monarch, spring from his own sovereign power and proceed directly from himself. He takes as little notice of authority as a monarch does of a command; nothing is valid unless he has himself authorised it. On the other hand, those of vulgar minds, who are swayed by all kinds of current opinions, authorities, and prejudices, are like the people which in silence obey the law and commands.

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"Thinking for Oneself," H. Dirks, trans.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 weeks 1 day ago
A man who has never been...

A man who has never been within the tropics does not know what a thunderstorm means; a man who has never looked on Niagara has but a faint idea of a cataract; and he who has not read Barère's Memoirs may be said not to know what it is to lie.

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Barère', The Edinburgh Review (April 1844), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. II (1860), p. 109
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 2 weeks ago
When the great religious and philosophical...

When the great religious and philosophical conceptions were alive, thinking people did not extol humility and brotherly love, justice and humanity because it was realistic to maintain such principles and odd and dangerous to deviate from them, or because these maxims were more in harmony with their supposedly free tastes than others. They held to such ideas because they saw in them elements of truth, because they connected them with the idea of logos, whether in the form of God or of a transcendental mind, or even of nature as an eternal principle.

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p. 34.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 6 days ago
Do not commence your exercises in...

Do not commence your exercises in philosophy in those regions where an error can deliver you over to the executioner.

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C 16
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
1 month 1 week ago
The more Lil' Kim distorted her...

The more Lil' Kim distorted her natural beauty to become a cartoonlike caricature of whiteness, the larger her success.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 3 weeks ago
Scientific theories can always be improved...

Scientific theories can always be improved and are improved. That is one of the glories of science. It is the authoritarian view of the Universe that is frozen in stone and cannot be changed, so that once it is wrong, it is wrong forever.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Sobriety, as opposed to inebriety and...

Sobriety, as opposed to inebriety and gluttony, is of admirable use in teaching men that nature is satisfied with a little, and enabling them to content themselves with simple and frugal fare.

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Philosophical Maxims
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