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Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 4 weeks ago
Saints live in flames...

Saints live in flames; wise men, next to them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 2 weeks ago
Who, then, can be more ignorant...

Who, then, can be more ignorant of nature than he who classes this cruel and hurtful vice as belonging to her best and most polished work?

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
6 months 4 days ago
It is not because men's desires...

It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.

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On Liberty, 1859
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 months 3 days ago
For there's no rood has not...

For there's no rood has not a star above it; The cordial quality of pear or plum Ascends as gladly in a single tree, As in broad orchards resonant with bees; And every atom poises for itself, And for the whole.

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Musketaquid, st. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
5 months 3 days ago
He who carries self-regard far enough...

He who carries self-regard far enough to keep himself in good health and high spirits, in the first place thereby becomes an immediate source of happiness to those around, and in the second place maintains the ability to increase their happiness by altruistic actions. But one whose bodily vigour and mental health are undermined by self-sacrifice carried too far, in the first place becomes to those around a cause of depression, and in the second place renders himself incapable, or less capable, of actively furthering their welfare. In estimating conduct we must remember that there are those who by their joyousness beget joy in others, and that there are those who by their melancholy cast a gloom on every circle they enter.

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Ethics (New York:1915), § 72, pp. 193-194
Philosophical Maxims
G. E. Moore
G. E. Moore
4 months 4 weeks ago
By far the most valuable things,...

By far the most valuable things, which we know or can imagine, are certain states of consciousness, which may roughly be described as the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects. No one, probably, who has asked himself the question, has ever doubted that personal affection and the appreciation of what is beautiful in Art or Nature, are good in themselves; nor, if we consider strictly what things are worth having purely for their own sakes, does it appear probable that any one will think that anything else has nearly so much value as the things which are included under these two heads.

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Principia Ethica (1903; revised edition, Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 week ago
Raise your eyes....
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Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
6 months 3 days ago
Too much consistency is as bad...

Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. Consistent intellectualism and spirituality may be socially valuable, up to a point; but they make, gradually, for individual death.

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"Wordsworth in the Tropics" in Do What You Will, 1929
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
6 months 1 week ago
Everything that is possible…

Everything that is possible demands to exist.

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1686
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 4 weeks ago
What I know wreaks havoc upon...

What I know wreaks havoc upon what I want.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
6 months 2 days ago
You could send your soul after...

You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other.

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Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
4 months 2 weeks ago
Care and responsibility are constituent elements...

Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness. Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his individuality and uniqueness. To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibility would be blind if they were not guided by the knowledge of the person's individuality.

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Ch. 3; in Ch. 2 of his later work The Art of Loving (1956) a similar statement is made :
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
5 months 1 day ago
To be a good mother -...

To be a good mother - a woman must have sense, and that independence of mind which few women possess who are taught to depend entirely on their husbands. Meek wives are, in general, foolish mothers; wanting their children to love them best, and take their part, in secret, against the father, who is held up as a scarecrow.

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Ch. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 4 weeks ago
The gesture that divides madness is...

The gesture that divides madness is the constitutive one, not the science that grows up in the calm that returns after the division has been made.

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Preface to 1961 edition
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
6 months 1 week ago
But the best demonstration by far...

But the best demonstration by far is experience, if it go not beyond the actual experiment.

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Aphorism 70
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
6 months 5 days ago
The teaching of my philosophy... that...

The teaching of my philosophy... that our whole existence is something which had better not have been, and that to disown and disclaim it is the highest wisdom.

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Ch 1
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
5 months 3 weeks ago
He who does wrong is more...

He who does wrong is more unhappy than he who suffers wrong.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl
2 months 2 weeks ago
To gaze up from the ruins...

To gaze up from the ruins of the oppressive present towards the stars is to recognise the indestructible world of laws, to strengthen faith in reason, to realise the "harmonia mundi" that transfuses all phenomena, and that never has been, nor will be, disturbed.

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From the Author's Preface to Third Edition
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 2 weeks ago
If a captive mind is unaware...

If a captive mind is unaware of being in prison, it is living in error. If it has recognized the fact, even for the tenth of a second, and then quickly forgotten it in order to avoid suffering, it is living in falsehood. Men of the most brilliant intelligence can be born, live and die in error and falsehood. In them, intelligence is neither a good, nor even an asset. The difference between more or less intelligent men is like the difference between criminals condemned to life imprisonment in smaller or larger cells. The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

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p. 69
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 months ago
If you are distressed by anything...

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

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VII, 11.
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
6 months 1 week ago
In the land of the blind…

In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is lord.

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Act III, scene ix
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
5 months 3 weeks ago
For joys fall….

For joys fall not to the rich alone, nor has he lived ill, who from birth to death has passed unknown.

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Book I, epistle xvii, line 9
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
6 months 2 days ago
Night is falling: at dusk, you...

Night is falling: at dusk, you must have good eyesight to be able to tell the Good Lord from the Devil.

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Act 10, sc. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 4 days ago
Among human beings, the subjection of...

Among human beings, the subjection of women is much more complete at a certain level of civilization than it is among savages. And the subjection is always reinforced by morality.

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Ch. 15: Power and moral codes
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
3 months 2 weeks ago
I wonder why I bother to...

I wonder why I bother to tell the truth when people ask me what I think of this and that and how I feel about this and that. I get so complicated and introspective that people often don't understand and are frankly puzzled and (naturally enough) bored. So why bother! It would be so much easier to say what they expected you to, and everything would be easy and pleasant.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 weeks ago
Consider, for example, the state of...

Consider, for example, the state of Science generally, in Europe, at this period. It is admitted, on all sides, that the Metaphysical and Moral Sciences are falling into decay, while the Physical are engrossing, every day, more respect and attention. In most of the European nations there is now no such thing as a Science of Mind; only more or less advancement in the general science, or the special sciences, of matter.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
4 months 1 day ago
Even a single hair casts its...

Even a single hair casts its shadow.

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Maxim 228
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
4 months 3 weeks ago
The color is of the object...

The color is of the object and the object in all its qualities is expressed through color. For it is objects that glows- gems and sunlight; and it is objects that are splendid- crowns, robes, sunlight. Except as they express objects, through being the significant color-quality of materials of ordinary experience, colors effect only transient excitations.

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p. 212
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
3 months 1 week ago
Human intuitions are systematically biased. Evolutionary...

Human intuitions are systematically biased. Evolutionary psychology explains how our moral intuitions and the rationalisations they spawn have been shaped by millennia of natural selection to maximise the inclusive fitness of our genes, not to track the welfare of other sentient beings impartially conceived. Many human cultures have found nothing intuitively wrong with aggressive warfare, slavery, wife-beating, infanticide or female genital mutilation. Ultimately, folk morality is a doomed enterprise as hopeless as folk physics. A mature posthuman ethics, I'd argue, must be committed to the well-being of all sentient life; and mature posthuman technology offers the means to deliver that commitment.

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"Post-Darwinian Ethics?", H+ Magazine, May 2009
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 3 weeks ago
Because of your unbelief: for verily...

Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.

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17:20-21 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
4 months 3 weeks ago
To know how just a cause...

To know how just a cause we have for grieving is already a consolation.

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Ch. IV.: Music
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
6 months 1 week ago
If the material world rests upon...

If the material world rests upon a similar ideal world, this ideal world must rest upon some other; and so on, without end. It were better, therefore, never to look beyond the present material world. By supposing it to contain the principle of its order within itself, we really assert it to be God; and the sooner we arrive at that Divine Being, so much the better. When you go one step beyond the mundane system, you only excite an inquisitive humour which it is impossible ever to satisfy.

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Philo to Cleanthes, Part IV
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
6 months 1 week ago
For man seeketh in society comfort,...

For man seeketh in society comfort, use, and protection: and they be three wisdoms of divers natures, which do often sever: wisdom of the behaviour, wisdom of business, and wisdom of state.

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Book II, xxiii
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
4 months 3 weeks ago
I think that the philosopher must,...

I think that the philosopher must, for his own purposes, carry methodological strictness to an extreme when he is investigating and pursuing his truths, but when he is ready to enunciate them and give them out, he ought to avoid the cynical skill with which some scientists, like a Hercules at the fair, amuse themselves by displaying to the public the biceps of their technique.

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pp. 19-20
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
4 months 2 weeks ago
If the individual realizes his self...

If the individual realizes his self by spontaneous activity and thus relates himself to the world, he ceases to be an isolated atom; he and the world become part of one structuralized whole; he has his rightful place, and thereby his doubt concerning himself and the meaning of life disappears. This doubt sprang from his separateness and from the thwarting of life; when he can live, neither compulsively nor automatically but spontaneously, the doubt disappears. He is aware of himself as an active and creative individual and recognizes that there is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself.

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Ch. 7, p. 262-3
Philosophical Maxims
Sir Thomas Browne
Sir Thomas Browne
5 months 1 week ago
That some have never dreamed is...

That some have never dreamed is as improbable as that some have never laughed.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
5 months 1 day ago
It may be confidently asserted that...

It may be confidently asserted that no man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. And the desire of rectifying these mistakes, is the noble ambition of an enlightened understanding, the impulse of feelings that Philosophy invigorates.

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A Vindication of the Rights of Men
Philosophical Maxims
Étienne de La Boétie
Étienne de La Boétie
2 months 4 weeks ago
Friendship ... receives its real sustenance...

Friendship ... receives its real sustenance from an equality that, to proceed without a limp, must have its two limbs equal.

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Part 3
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 2 weeks ago
... the only contestant who can...

... the only contestant who can confidently enter the lists is the man who has seen his own blood, who has felt his teeth rattle beneath his opponent's fist, who has been tripped and felt the full force of his adversary's charge, who has been downed in body but not in spirit, one who, as often as he falls, rises again with greater defiance than ever.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 1 week ago
Some impose upon the world that...

Some impose upon the world that they believe that which they do not; others, more in number, make themselves believe that they believe, not being able to penetrate into what it is to believe.

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Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
2 months 2 weeks ago
To take Macaulay out of literature...

To take Macaulay out of literature and society and put him in the House of Commons, is like taking the chief physician out of London during a pestilence.

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Vol. I, ch. 9, p. 315
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
5 months ago
Just as man as a social...

Just as man as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find the real justification for his existence, and his own spiritual and moral autonomy, anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors.

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p 23
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 4 days ago
I am looking forward very much...

I am looking forward very much to getting back to Cambridge, and being able to say what I think and not to mean what I say: two things which at home are impossible. Cambridge is one of the few places where one can talk unlimited nonsense and generalities without anyone pulling one up or confronting one with them when one says just the opposite the next day.

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Letter to Alys Pearsall Smith (1893); published in The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, Volume 1: The Private Years (1884-1914), edited by Nicholas Griffin
Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
1 month 4 weeks ago
For Lenin, the difference between the...

For Lenin, the difference between the Social Democracy and Blanquism is reduced to the observation that in place of a handful of conspirators we have a class-conscious proletariat. He forgets that this difference implies a complete revision of our ideas on organization and, therefore, an entirely different conception of centralism and the relations existing between the party and the struggle itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
5 months 1 week ago
After having thus successively taken each...

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the government then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

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Book Four, Chapter VI.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 4 days ago
Toleration is good for all, or...

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

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Speech on the Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
6 months 1 week ago
Lastly, there are Idols which have...

Lastly, there are Idols which have immigrated into men's minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also from wrong laws of demonstration. These I call Idols of the Theater, because in my judgment all the received systems are but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion.

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Aphorism 44
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
6 months 3 days ago
I saw a moving sight the...

I saw a moving sight the other morning before breakfast in a little hotel where I slept in the dusty fields. The young man of the house shot a little wolf called coyote in the early morning. The little heroic animal lay on the ground, with his big furry ears, and his clean white teeth, and his little cheerful body, but his little brave life was gone. It made me think how brave all living things are. Here little coyote was, without any clothes or house or books or anything, with nothing to pay his way with, and risking his life so cheerfully - and losing it - just to see if he could pick up a meal near the hotel. He was doing his coyote-business like a hero, and you must do your boy-business, and I my man-business bravely, too, or else we won't be worth as much as a little coyote.

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28-Aug-89
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
4 months 2 weeks ago
Often things realised in thought are...

Often things realised in thought are more vivid than than the same things in inattentive physical experience. But the things apprehended as mental are always subject to the condition that we come to a stop when we come to explore ever higher grades of complexity in their realised relationships. We always find tat we have thought of just this - whatever it may be - and of no more.

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Ch. 10: "Abstraction", p. 239
Philosophical Maxims
David Wood
David Wood
3 months 1 week ago
Like literature, philosophy is not distinguished...

Like literature, philosophy is not distinguished from other subjects by a specific approach to a subject-matter independent of it. Chemistry deals with chemicals, biology with life and astronomy with very large, very distant objects. Philosophy can boast no such definite subject-matter.

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Chapter 4, Philosophy As Writing: The Case Of Hegel, p. 69
Philosophical Maxims
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