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Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 4 weeks ago
Most men pursue pleasure with such...

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
If truth were not boring, science...

If truth were not boring, science would have done away with God long ago. But God as well as the saints is a means to escape the dull banality of truth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 6 days ago
Is Christ only to be adored?...

Is Christ only to be adored? Or is the holy Mother of God rather not to be honoured? This is the woman who crushed the Serpent's head. Hear us. For your Son denies you nothing.

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Weimar edition of Martin Luther's Works, English translation edited by J. Pelikan [Concordia: St. Louis], Vol. 51, 128-129
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 3 weeks ago
In brief, it is my thesis...

In brief, it is my thesis that human misery is the most urgent problem of a rational public policy and that happiness is not such a problem.

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p. 485
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 2 weeks ago
And He is the God of...

And He is the God of the humble, for in the words of the Apostle, God chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty (I Cor. i. 27) And God is in each of us in the measure in which one feels Him and loves Him. "If of two men," says Kierkegaard, "one prays to the true God without sincerity of heart, and the other prays to the an idol with all the passion of an infinite yearning, it is the first who really prays to the idol, while the second really prays to God." It would be better to say that the true God is He to whom man truly prays and whom man truly desires. And there may even be a truer revelation in superstition itself than in theology.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
4 months 2 weeks ago
To abjure the notion of the...

To abjure the notion of the "truly human" is to abjure the attempt to divinize the self as a replacement for a divinized world.

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Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), p. 35
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 4 weeks ago
A life without adventure is likely...

A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.

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Authority and the Individual, 1949
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 3 weeks ago
The magic of the cave image...

The magic of the cave image lies in its being, not in its being seen. The symbolic does not refer. It is.

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(p. 350)
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
3 months 1 week ago
The existential split in man would...

The existential split in man would be unbearable could he not establish a sense of unity within himself and with the natural and human world outside.

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p. 262
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 weeks ago
Literary men are...a perpetual priesthood. The...

Literary men are...a perpetual priesthood.

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The State of German Literature.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 4 weeks ago
The concessions of the weak are...

The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 1 week ago
Yet its essence was the certitude...

Yet its essence was the certitude that his life was not totally at the mercy of chance. Somehow, it was more important than that. This sense of power inside his head - which he could intensify by pulling a face and wrinkling up the muscles of his forehead - aroused a glow of optimism, an expectation of exciting events. He knew that for him, fate held something special in store.

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p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
L.P. Jacks
L.P. Jacks
3 weeks 4 days ago
I had been virtually a Unitarian...

I had been virtually a Unitarian (as I still am) but without knowing it. The experience of being among Unitarians who did know what they were, and attached much importance to it, was entirely novel to me, but I soon fell into their ways and found it easy to go forward on their road, the more so because the other roads became closed to me.

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The Confession of an Octogenarian (1942), p. 99.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 4 weeks ago
Poetry - No definition of poetry...

Poetry - No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know. The poet does not need to see how meadows are something else than earth, grass, and water, but how they are thus much. He does not need discover that potato blows are as beautiful as violets, as the farmer thinks, but only how good potato blows are. The poem is drawn out from under the feet of the poet, his whole weight has rested on this ground. It has a logic more severe than the logician's. You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought.

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January 26, 1840
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 4 weeks ago
To be without some of the...

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 4 weeks ago
Married people pledge love for each...

Married people pledge love for each other throughout eternity. Well, now, that is easy enough but does not mean very much, for if one is finished with time one is probably finished with eternity. If, instead of saying "throughout eternity," the couple would say, "until Easter, until next May Day," then what they say would make some sense, for then they would be saying something and also something they perhaps could carry out.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 4 weeks ago
Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca...

Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist-I really believe he is Antichrist-I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you-sit down and tell me all the news.

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Bk. I, Ch. I
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 months 4 weeks ago
If there be an order in...

If there be an order in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge, there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order. So that even were the order intrinsically indifferent, it would facilitate education to lead the individual mind through the steps traversed by the general mind. But the order is not intrinsically indifferent; and hence the fundamental reason why education should be a repetition of civilization in little.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 1 day ago
Now the maximum of perfection is...

Now the maximum of perfection is called ideal, by Plato, Idea - for instance, his Idea of a Republic - and is the principle of all that is contained under the general notion of any perfection, inasmuch as the lesser grades are not thought determinable but by limiting the maximum. But God, the Ideal of perfection, and hence the principle of cognition, is also, as existing really, the principle of the creation of all perfection.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 1 week ago
Barbusse has shown us that the...

Barbusse has shown us that the Outsider is a man who cannot live in the comfortable, insulated world of the bourgeois, accepting what he sees and touches as reality.

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Chapter one, The Country of the Blind
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 1 week ago
So-called professional mathematicians have, in their...

So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians.

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K 52
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
4 months 5 days ago
I pray you, magnificent Sir, do...

I pray you, magnificent Sir, do not trouble yourself to return to us, but await our coming to you.

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Third Dialogue
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 6 days ago
Ambition is not a vice of...

Ambition is not a vice of little people.

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Book III, Ch. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 6 days ago
It should be noted that children...

It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity. Variants: It should be noted that the games of children are not games, and must be considered as their most serious actions. For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

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Book I, Ch. 23
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
3 months 2 weeks ago
Art expresses, it does not state;...

Art expresses, it does not state; it is concerned with existences in their perceived qualities, not with conceptions symbolized in terms.

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p. 139
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
3 months 1 day ago
To every action there is always...

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction; or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.

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Laws of Motion, III
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 3 days ago
There are at the present time...

There are at the present time two great nations in the world-allude to the Russians and the Americans- All other nations seem to have nearly reached their national limits, and have only to maintain their power; these alone are proceeding-along a path to which no limit can be perceived.

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Chapter XVIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is clear that the causal...

It is clear that the causal nexus is not a nexus at all.

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Journal entry (12 October 1916), p. 84e
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 2 weeks ago
Imagination, which is the social sense,...

Imagination, which is the social sense, animates the inanimate and anthropomorphizes everything; it humanizes everything and even makes everything identical with man. And the work of man is to supernaturalize Nature - that is to say, to make it divine by making it human, to help it to become conscious of itself, in short. The action of reason, on the other hand, is to mechanize or materialize.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
4 months 2 weeks ago
Making money is not without its...

Making money is not without its value, but nothing is baser than to make it by wrong-doing.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
A mouse and a human....
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Main Content / General
William James
William James
4 months 4 weeks ago
So long as antimilitarists propose no...

So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation.

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The Moral Equivalent of War
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 1 week ago
Nothing lasts forever…

Nothing lasts forever, few things even last for long: all are susceptible of decay in one way or another; moreover all that begins also ends.

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From Ad Polybium De Consolatione (Of Consolation, To Polybius), chap. I; translation based on work of Aubrey Stewart
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 4 weeks ago
There is a sort of enthusiasm...

There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgments of the ignorant upon their designs.

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Volume I, p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
I feel effective, competent, likely to...

I feel effective, competent, likely to do something positive only when I lie down and abandon myself to an interrogation without object or end.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
2 weeks 4 days ago
Whether you can observe a...

Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.

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Objecting to the placing of observables at the heart of the new quantum mechanics, during Heisenberg's 1926 lecture at Berlin; related by Heisenberg, quoted in Unification of Fundamental Forces (1990) by Abdus Salam
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
3 weeks 5 days ago
It is from the shadow of...

It is from the shadow of a cloister that there emerges one of mankind's greatest very greatest scourges. Luther appears; Calvin follows him. The Peasants' Revolt; the Thirty Years' War; the civil war in France; the massacre of the Low Countries; the massacre of Ireland; the massacre of the Cévennes; St Bartholomew's Day; the murders of Henry II, Henry IV, Mary Stuart, and Charles I; and finally, in our day, from the same source, the French Revolution.

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Chapter III, p. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 1 day ago
Collectively, the more civilized men are,...

Collectively, the more civilized men are, the more they are actors. They assume the appearance of attachment, of esteem for others, of modesty, and of disinterestedness, without ever deceiving anyone, because everyone understands that nothing sincere is meant. Persons are familiar with this, and it is even a good thing that this is so in this world, for when men play these roles, virtues are gradually established, whose appearance had up until now only been affected. These virtues ultimately will become part of the actor's disposition. To deceive the deceiver in ourselves, or the tendency to deceive, is a fresh return to obedience.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 37
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
3 months 1 day ago
The best and safest method of...

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be, first to enquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish these properties by experiment, and then to proceed more slowly to hypothesis for the explanation of them. For hypotheses should be employed only in explaining the properties of things, but not assumed in determining them, unless so far as they may furnish experiments.

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Letter to Ignatius Pardies (1672) Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Feb. 1671/2) as quoted by William L. Harper
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 3 weeks ago
The introduction of free competition is...

The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration that from now on the members of society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in society. Free competition is necessary for the establishment of big industry, because it is the only condition of society in which big industry can make its way.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 1 week ago
There certainly is self division. The...

There certainly is self division. The man who watches a woman undressing has the red eyes of an ape; yet the man who sees two young lovers, really alone for the first time, who brings out all the pathos, the tenderness and uncertainty when he tells about it, is no brute; he is very much human. And the ape and the man exist in one body; and when the ape's desires are about to be fulfilled, he disappears and is succeeded by the man, who is disgusted with the ape's appetite.

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Chapter one, The Country of the Blind
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
4 months 2 days ago
We are all instruments endowed with...

We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.

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"Conversation Between D'Alembert and Diderot"
Philosophical Maxims
Gottlob frege
Gottlob frege
3 months 2 weeks ago
Often it is only after immense...

Often it is only after immense intellectual effort, which may have continued over centuries, that humanity at last succeeds in achieving knowledge of a concept in its pure form, by stripping off the irrelevant accretions which veil it from the eye of the mind.

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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
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 6 days ago
Labour not after riches first, and...

Labour not after riches first, and think thou afterwards wilt enjoy them. He who neglecteth the present moment, throweth away all that he hath. As the arrow passeth through the heart, while the warrior knew not that it was coming; so shall his life be taken away before he knoweth that he hath it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
4 weeks ago
The State legislatures should be immediately...

The State legislatures should be immediately urged to relinquish the right of establishing banks of discount. Most of them will comply, on patriotic principles, under the convictions of the moment; and the non-complying may be crowded into concurrence by legitimate devices.

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Letter to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:190
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
3 months 2 weeks ago
The concept of guilt is found...

The concept of guilt is found most powerfully developed even in the most primitive communal forms which we know: ... the man is guilty who violates one of the original laws which dominate the society and which are mostly derived from a divine founder; the boy who is accepted into the tribal community and learns its laws, which bind him thenceforth, learns to promise; this promise is often given under the sign of death, which is symbolically carried out on the boy, with a symbolical rebirth.

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p. 178
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
4 months 2 weeks ago
He who upholds Truth with all...

He who upholds Truth with all the might of his power, He who upholds Truth the utmost in his word and deed,He, indeed, is Thy most valued helper, O Mazda Ahura!

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Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 31, 22.
Philosophical Maxims
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
3 months 2 weeks ago
Thought without language, says Lavelle, would...

Thought without language, says Lavelle, would not be a purer thought; it would be no more than the intention to think. And his last book offers a theory of expressiveness which makes of expression not "a faithful image of an already realized interior being, but the very means by which it is realized."

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p. 8
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Therefore whoever hears these sayings of...

Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
4 weeks ago
It has always been denied by...

It has always been denied by the republican party in this country, that the Constitution had given the power of incorporation to Congress. On the establishment of the Bank of the United States, this was the great ground on which that establishment was combated; and the party prevailing supported it only on the argument of its being an incident to the power given them for raising money.

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Letter to Dr. Maese (1809) ME 12:231 : The Writings of Thomas Jefferson "Memorial Edition" (20 Vols., 1903-04)
Philosophical Maxims
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