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comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 6 days ago
Suicide is sudden....
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Main Content / General
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
4 months ago
The endeavor of scientific research to...

The endeavor of scientific research to see events in their more general connection in order to determine their laws, is a legitimate and useful occupation. Any protest against such efforts, in the name of freefom from restrictive conditions, would be fruitless if science did not naïvely identify the abstractions called rules and laws with the actually efficacious forces, and confuse the probability that B will follow A with the actual effort make B follow A.

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p. 150.
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 1 week ago
For passionate emotions of all sorts,...

For passionate emotions of all sorts, and for everything which has been said or written in exaltation of them, he professed the greatest contempt. He regarded them as a form of madness. "The intense" was with him a bye-word of scornful disapprobation. He regarded as an aberration of the moral standard of modern times, compared with that of the ancients, the great stress laid upon feeling.

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(p. 49)
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
4 months 1 week ago
A subject interests me and holds...

A subject interests me and holds my attention only so long as it presents me with difficulties, only so long as I am at odds with it and have, as it were, to struggle with it; but once I have mastered it I hurry on to something else, to a new subject; for my interest is not confined to any particular field or subject; it extends to everything human. This does not mean that I am an intellectual miser or egoist, who amasses knowledge for himself alone; by no means! What I do and think for myself, I must also think and do for others. But I feel the need of instructing others in a subject only so long as, while instructing others, I am also instructing myself.

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Lecture I, , R. Manheim, trans. (1967), p. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
4 months 4 weeks ago
Conquered Greece….

Conquered Greece took captive her savage conqueror and brought her arts into rustic Latium.

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Book II, epistle i, lines 156-157
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 5 days ago
Isn't history ultimately the result of...

Isn't history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 3 weeks ago
No man is free who is...

No man is free who is not master of himself.

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Fragment 35 (Oldfather translation)
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
2 months 3 weeks ago
Marriage is tough, because it is...

Marriage is tough, because it is woven of all these various elements, the weak and the strong. "In love-ness" is fragile for it is woven only with the gossamer threads of beauty. It seems to me absurd to talk about "happy" and "unhappy" marriages.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 5 days ago
He detested objective truths, the burden...

He detested objective truths, the burden of argument, sustained reasoning. He disliked demonstrating, he wanted to convince no one. Others are a dialectician's invention.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
5 months 4 days ago
What is called "objectivity," scientific for...

What is called "objectivity," scientific for instance (in which I firmly believe, in a given situation) imposes itself only within a context which is extremely vast, old, firmly established, or rooted in a network of conventions ... and yet which still remains a context.

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Limited Inc
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 2 days ago
Peace be with you. Receive my...

Peace be with you. Receive my peace unto yourselves. Beware that no one lead you astray saying Lo here or lo there! For the Son of Man is within you. Follow after Him! Those who seek Him will find Him. Go then and preach the gospel of the Kingdom. Do not lay down any rules beyond what I appointed you, and do not give a law like the lawgiver lest you be constrained by it.

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Chapter 4. tion.
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
2 months 3 days ago
See now the power of truth;...

See now the power of truth; the same experiment which at first glance seemed to show one thing, when more carefully examined, assures us of the contrary.

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Salviati, Third Day. Naturally Accelerated Motion
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 3 weeks ago
Man desires to praise thee...

Man desires to praise thee, for he is a part of thy creation; he bears his mortality about with him and carries the evidence of his sin and the proof that thou dost resist the proud. Still he desires to praise thee, this man who is only a small part of thy creation. Thou hast prompted him, that he should delight to praise thee, for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee.

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I, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months ago
Not the external and physical alone...

Not the external and physical alone is now managed by machinery, but the internal and spiritual also. Here too nothing follows its spontaneous course, nothing is left to be accomplished by old natural methods. Everything has its cunningly devised implements, its preestablished apparatus; it is not done by hand, but by machinery.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
2 months 3 days ago
What is objective must be common...

What is objective must be common to many minds and consequently transmissible from one to the other, and as this transmission can only come about by... discourse... we are even forced to conclude: no discourse no objectivity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 3 weeks ago
The poor, stupid, free American citizen!...

The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal suffrage, and, by that right, he has forged chains about his limbs. The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the right of boycott, of picketing, in fact, of everything, except the right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
2 months 5 days ago
Wisdom, virtue, morality, all these have...

Wisdom, virtue, morality, all these have fallen out of fashion: everybody worships at the shrine of commerce.

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The Theory of the Four Movements (1808), G. Jones, ed. (1966), p. 269
Philosophical Maxims
William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford
1 month 1 week ago
To sum up: it is wrong...

To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it--the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 1 week ago
Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic...

Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.

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"The Substitutes for Religion, The Religion of Sex"
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 3 weeks ago
When, in the course of human...

When, in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob, and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
5 months 4 weeks ago
A true friend will partake of...

A true friend will partake of the wants and sorrows of his friend, as if they were his own; if he be in want, he will relieve him; if he be in prison, he will visit him; if he be sick, he will come to him; nay-situations may occur, in which he would not scruple to die for him. It cannot then be doubted, that friendship is one of the most useful means of procuring a secure, tranquil, and happy life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 1 week ago
Thus, while the refugee serfs only...

Thus, while the refugee serfs only wished to be free to develop and assert those conditions of existence which were already there, and hence, in the end, only arrived at free labour, the proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, will have to abolish the very condition of their existence hitherto (which has, moreover, been that of all society up to the present), namely, labour. Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that is, the State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State.

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"Communism. The Production of the Form of Intercourse Itself", The Marx-Engels Reader
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months ago
Sure enough, America is a great,...

Sure enough, America is a great, and in many respects a blessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sure enough, these hardy millions of Anglo-Saxon men prove themselves worthy of their genealogy; and, with the axe and plough and hammer, if not yet with any much finer kind of implements, are triumphantly clearing out wide spaces, seedfields for the sustenance and refuge of mankind, arenas for the future history of the world; doing, in their day and generation, a creditable and cheering feat under the sun. But as to a Model Republic, or a model anything, the wise among themselves know too well that there is nothing to be said.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
5 months 1 week ago
The main characteristic of any event...

The main characteristic of any event is that it has not been foreseen. We don't know the future but everybody acts into the future. Nobody knows what he is doing because the future is being done, action is being done by a "we" and not an "I." Only if I were the only one acting could I foretell the consequences of what I'm doing. What actually happens is entirely contingent, and contingency is indeed one of the biggest factors in all history.

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Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
5 months 2 weeks ago
"The first method for estimating the...

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.

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The Prince (1513), Ch. 22
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
4 months 2 days ago
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts...

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 3 weeks ago
Sartre observed that he had never...

Sartre observed that he had never felt so free as during the German occupation when (as a member of the French resistance) he was in constant danger of being arrested and shot. Could there be a more conclusive proof that human beings are freer than they realize, and that their freedom is eroded by habit and laziness?

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Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
5 months 1 week ago
Of corruption, the principal and direct...

Of corruption, the principal and direct use is, to engage the representatives of the people to betray their trust, and sell themselves and the people to the universal corrupter-the monarch, in his capacity of corrupter-general.

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Constitutional Code (written between 1820 and 1832), quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. XVII (1841), p. 76
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
1 month 1 week ago
What one has to say to...

What one has to say to begin with is that, as humans, we are limited in intelligence and we really have no reliable foresight. So none of us will come up with answers to the whole great problem. What we can do is judge our behavior, our history, and our present situation by a better standard than "efficiency" or "profit," or those measures that we're still using to determine economic decisions.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 2 weeks ago
In the long run, there is...

In the long run, there is nothing to stop intelligent agents from identifying the molecular signature of experience below hedonic zero and eliminating it altogether - even in insects. Nociception is vital; pain is optional. I tentatively predict that the world's last unpleasant experience in our forward light-cone will be a precisely datable event - perhaps some micro-pain in an obscure marine invertebrate a few centuries hence.

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The Radical Plan to Phase out Earth's Predatory Species, io9, 30 Jul. 2014
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
4 months 1 week ago
The tyranny of Mrs. Grundy is...

The tyranny of Mrs. Grundy is worse than any other tyranny we suffer under.

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On Manners and Fashion
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 1 week ago
The baby, assailed by eyes, ears,...

The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion; and to the very end of life, our location of all things in one space is due to the fact that the original extents or bignesses of all the sensations which came to our notice at once, coalesced together into one and the same space.

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Ch. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
1 month 6 days ago
Ancient philosophy will always hold its...

Ancient philosophy will always hold its own among those who are worthy to judge it, because it forms... a system that is solid and well articulated like the body, whereas all these scattered members of modern philosophy form no system.

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Ch. VI Concerning the Sensitive Faculty of Matter
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 1 week ago
If we remembered everything, we should...

If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take as long for us to recall a space of time as it took the original time to elapse, and we should never get ahead with our thinking. All recollected times undergo, accordingly, what M. Ribot calls foreshortening; and this foreshortening is due to the omission of an enormous number of the facts which filled them.

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Ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 1 week ago
Owing to the identification of religion...

Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others.

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p. 110
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 months 2 weeks ago
Might there not be a connection...

Might there not be a connection between the attempt to eradicate religion and the loss of freedom? It is unlikely that Mao, who launched his assault on the people and culture of Tibet with the slogan "Religion is poison," would have agreed that his atheist world-view had no bearing on his policies.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 1 week ago
Christianity does not involve the belief...

Christianity does not involve the belief that all things were made for man. It does involve the belief that God loves man and for his sake became man and died.

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Ch. 7: "A Chapter of Red Herrings"
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
4 months 1 day ago
Works of art express space as...

Works of art express space as opportunity for movement and action.

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p. 217
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
5 months 1 week ago
It is sad that often…

It is sad that often, to be a good patriot, one must be the enemy of the rest of mankind.

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"Country"
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
5 months 3 weeks ago
The first-beginnings…

The first-beginnings of things cannot be seen by the eyes.

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Book I, line 268 (tr. Munro)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months ago
Luther's merit in literary history is...

Luther's merit in literary history is of the greatest: his dialect became the language of all writing. They are not well written, these Four-and-twenty Quartos of his; written hastily, with quite other than literary objects. But in no Books have I found a more robust, genuine, I will say noble faculty of a man than in these. A rugged honesty, homeliness, simplicity; a rugged sterling sense and strength. He dashes out illumination from him; his smiting idiomatic phrases seem to cleave into the very secret of the matter. Good humor too, nay tender affection, nobleness and depth: this man could have been a Poet too! He had to work an Epic Poem, not write one.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 2 weeks ago
We do not become righteous by...

We do not become righteous by doing righteous deeds but, having been made righteous, we do righteous deeds.

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Thesis 40
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
2 months 3 weeks ago
I believe Gandhi is the only...

I believe Gandhi is the only person who knew about real democracy - not democracy as the right to go and buy what you want, but democracy as the responsibility to be accountable to everyone around you. Democracy begins with freedom from hunger, freedom from unemployment, freedom from fear, and freedom from hatred. To me, those are the real freedoms on the basis of which good human societies are based.

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1998
Philosophical Maxims
Étienne de La Boétie
Étienne de La Boétie
2 months 4 days ago
The fundamental political question is why...

The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support.

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This quote is a paraphrase of the contents of the first chapter of Discourse on Voluntary Servitude. The quote appears in an edition titled Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude edited by Murray Rothbard and Harry Kurz (1975), p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
5 months 1 week ago
The right of voting for representatives...

The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.

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Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 month 1 week ago
The 'Logic of Induction' consists in...

The 'Logic of Induction' consists in stating the Facts and the Inference in such a manner, that the evidence of the Inference is manifest; just as the Logic of Deduction consists in stating the Premises and the Conclusion in such a manner that the Evidence of the Conclusion is manifest.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 1 week ago
All movements go too far.

All movements go too far.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
4 months 2 weeks ago
Bad company is as instructive as...

Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one's innocence with the loss of one's prejudices.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
4 months 5 days ago
The slave frees himself when, of...

The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 1 week ago
She believed in nothing; only her...

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

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The Words (1964), speaking of his grandmother.
Philosophical Maxims
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