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comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
A self-respecting man...
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Main Content / General
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
4 months 2 weeks ago
Writing is like getting married. One...

Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.

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The Black Prince (1973); 2003, p. 10.
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 4 weeks ago
It is the necessary, though very...

It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual, consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.

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Chapter II
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
4 months 2 weeks ago
The empiricist thinks he believes only...

The empiricist thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.

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"Objections to Belief in Substance", p. 201
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 3 weeks ago
Every one knows that there are...

Every one knows that there are no real forests in England. The deer in the parks of the great are demurely domestic cattle, fat as London alderman.

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Vol. I, Ch. 27, pg. 803.
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 3 weeks ago
So far no one had had...
So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear; there may well be no books written in German which are richer in ideas and more independent than mine.
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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 months 3 weeks ago
The Anarchists are right in everything;...

The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without authority, there could not be worse violence than that of authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. "To establish Anarchy." "Anarchy will be instituted." But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require protection from governmental power, and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power.

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"On Anarchy", in Pamphlets : Translated from the Russian (1900) as translated by Aylmer Maude, p. 22
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
3 months 1 week ago
Identical in the physical processes by...

Identical in the physical processes by which he originates-identical in the early stages of his formation-identical in the mode of his nutrition before and after birth, with the animals which lie immediately below him in the scale-Man, if his adult and perfect structure be compared with theirs, exhibits, as might be expected, a marvellous likeness of organization. He resembles them as they resemble one another-he differs from them as they differ from one another.-And, though these differences and resemblances cannot be weighed and measured, their value may be readily estimated; the scale or standard of judgment, touching that value, being afforded and expressed by the system of classification of animals now current among zoologists.

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Ch.2, p. 83
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 3 weeks ago
Our condition is like that of...

Our condition is like that of the poor wolves: if one of the flock wound himself, or so much as limp, the rest eat him up incontinently. That serene Power interposes the check upon the caprices and officiousness of our wills.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 3 weeks ago
You must be afraid, my son....

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

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Mother to her young son, Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 3 weeks ago
Consciousness, then, does not appear to...

Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits ... A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 month 3 weeks ago
Terms which imply theoretical views are...

Terms which imply theoretical views are admissible, as far as the theory is proved.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle
1 month 3 weeks ago
It seems not absurd to conceive,...

It seems not absurd to conceive, that at first production of mixt bodies, the universal matter, whereof they among other parts of the universe consisted, was actually divided, into little particles, of several sizes and shapes, variously moved.

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Proposition I
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
4 months 1 week ago
Crowley wanted to be a magician...

Crowley wanted to be a magician because he wanted power -- power over other people.

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p. 157
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 3 weeks ago
No congress, nor mob, nor guillotine,...

No congress, nor mob, nor guillotine, nor fire, nor all together, can avail, to cut out, burn, or destroy the offense of superiority in persons. The superiority in him is inferiority in me.

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p. 65
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 3 weeks ago
The whole mystery of commodities, all...

The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labor as long as they take the form of commodities, vanishes therefore, so soon as we come to other forms of production.

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Vol. I, ch.1, section 4.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
4 months 2 weeks ago
While there may exist no more...

While there may exist no more than the normal extent of disagreement about the meaning of particular terms or theses contained in these works, there is a startling degree of divergence about the central view, the basic political attitude of Machiavelli.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 3 weeks ago
The church is a sort of...

The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 43
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 3 weeks ago
I conceive that the description so...

I conceive that the description so often given of a Benthamite, as a mere reasoning machine, though extremely inapplicable to most of those who have been designated by that title, was during two or three years of my life not altogether untrue of me. ...There is nothing very extraordinary in this fact: no youth of the age I then was, can be expected to be more than one thing, and this was the thing I happened to be. Ambition and desire of distinction, I had in abundance; and zeal for what I thought the good of mankind was my strongest sentiment, mixing with and colouring all others. But my zeal was as yet little else, at that period of my life, than zeal for speculative opinions. It had not its root in genuine benevolence, or sympathy with mankind; though these qualities held their due place in my ethical standard. Nor was it connected with any high enthusiasm for ideal nobleness.

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(pp. 109-110)
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 3 weeks ago
The undramatic fact is that I...

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

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4 months 3 weeks ago
A fool with a heart and...

A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.

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Part 1, Chapter 7
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 3 weeks ago
The only interesting philosophers are the...

The only interesting philosophers are the ones who have stopped thinking and have begun to search for happiness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 2 weeks ago
For the Scepticism, as I said,...

For the Scepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; it is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
6 months 3 weeks ago
And happiness is thought to depend...

And happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 1 week ago
It is not the man…

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

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Line 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
3 months 2 weeks ago
When we read the best nineteenth-...

When we read the best nineteenth- and twentieth-century novelists, we soon realize that they are trying in a variety of ways to establish a definition of human nature, to justify the continuation of life as well as the writing of novels.

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"The Sealed Treasure" (1960), p. 60
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 3 weeks ago
He realized now that to be...

He realized now that to be afraid of this death he was staring at with animal terror meant to be afraid of life. Fear of dying justified a limitless attachment to what is alive in man. And all those who had not made the gestures necessary to live their lives, all those who feared and exalted impotence — they were afraid of death because of the sanction it gave to a life in which they had not been involved. They had not lived enough, never having lived at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
4 months 3 weeks ago
The Scientific discourse extracts truths from...

The Scientific discourse extracts truths from the errors which surround and oppose it on all sides and in every form; and, by demolition of these opposing views as error, and as impossible to true thought, shows the truth as that which alone remains after their withdrawal, and therefore as the only possible truth:--and in this separation of opposites, and elucidation of the truth from the confused chaos in which truth and error lie mingled together, consists the peculiar and characteristic nature of the Scientific discourse. This method creates and produces truth, before our eyes, out of a world full of error.

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P. 26-27
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
4 months 3 weeks ago
Till mankind be satisfied with the...

Till mankind be satisfied with the naked statement of what they really perceive, till they confess virtue to be then most illustrious, when she more disdains the aid of ornament, they will never arrive at that manly justice of sentiment at which they seem destined one day to arrive. By his scheme of naked virtue will be every day a gainer; every succeeding observer willl more fully do her justice, while vice, deprived of that varnish with which she delighted to glow her actions of that gaudy exhibition which may be made alike by every pretender will speedily sink into unheeded contempt.

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Book V, Chapter 12, "Of Titles"
Philosophical Maxims
George Berkeley
George Berkeley
5 months 2 days ago
Our youth we can have but...

Our youth we can have but to-day, We may always find time to grow old. Can Love be controlled by Advice?

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reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 1 week ago
You have, dearest Serene, things that...

You have, dearest Serene, things that can protect tranquility, things that restore it, things that resist creeping escapes. Be it known, however, that none of these things is sufficient for those who hold a feeble matter, unless a constant concern surrounds the slipping mind.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
3 months 4 weeks ago
One may dream of a culture...

One may dream of a culture where everyone bursts into laughter when someone says: this is true, this is real.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 2 days ago
How many we know who have...

How many we know who have fled the sweetness of a tranquil life in their homes, among their friends, to seek the horror of uninhabitable deserts; who have flung themselves into humiliation, degradation, and the contempt of the world, and have enjoyed these and even sought them out.

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Ch. 14 (tr. Donald M. Frame)
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
4 months 1 week ago
Zen Buddhism is inspired by a...

Zen Buddhism is inspired by a basic trust in the Here, a basic trust in the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 3 weeks ago
What an incitation to hilarity, hearing...

What an incitation to hilarity, hearing the word goal while following a funeral procession!

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
6 months 4 days ago
Among the celestial bodies that are...

Among the celestial bodies that are revolving over our heads, though the motions are not the same, and though the force is not equal, yet they move, and ever have moved, without clashing, and in perfect harmony.

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Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
3 months 1 week ago
I have come to believe that...

I have come to believe that you can get along without anyone - that is, without the close contact of any one person. That is a terrible shock to me, but I think it is true. You do need companionship, but wherever you go, in whatever new environment, you will find people who, to a large degree, take the place of those you left...The intimate companionship goes, I think, when you leave a friend, but friendship stays. It is an inherent possibility of relationship that, once admitted - well, there it is.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 1 week ago
Rome is the Great Beast of...

Rome is the Great Beast of atheism and materialism, adoring nothing but itself. Israel is the Great Beast of religion. Neither one nor the other is likable. The Great Beast is always repulsive.

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p. 123
Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
6 months 2 days ago
M. Desargues puts me under obligations...

M. Desargues puts me under obligations on account of the pains that it has pleased him to have in me, in that he shows that he is sorry that I do not wish to study more in geometry, but I have resolved to quit only abstract geometry, that is to say, the consideration of questions which serve only to exercise the mind, and this, in order to study another kind of geometry, which has for its object the explanation of the phenomena of nature... You know that all my physics is nothing else than geometry.

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Letter to Marin Mersenne (July 27, 1638) as quoted by Florian Cajori, A History of Mathematics (1893) letter dated in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Vol. 3, The Correspondence (1991) ed. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
2 months 1 week ago
I do not mean to be...

I do not mean to be disrespectful, but the attempt of the Lords to stop the progress of reform reminds me very forcibly of the great storm at Sidmouth, and of the conduct of the excellent Mrs Partington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824 there set in a great flood upon that town - the tide rose to an incredible height - the waves rushed in upon the houses, and everything was threatened with destruction. In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused; Mrs. Partington's spirit was up. But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal.

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The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. Speech at Taunton
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 2 weeks ago
Thou shalt do no murder, Thou...

Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

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19:18-19 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
2 months 1 week ago
Ah, you flavour everything; you are...

Ah, you flavour everything; you are the vanilla of society.

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Vol. I, ch. 9, p. 312
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
4 months 1 week ago
I do not regard the late...

I do not regard the late Carl Sagan as any kind of authority. On the contrary, as this book will show, I regard him in many ways as a dubious publicity seeker and careerist, more concerned to maintain his reputation as the brilliant and sceptical representative of hard-headed science than to look squarely and honestly at the facts.

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In short, a bit of a crook. pp. xix-xx
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 3 weeks ago
Does anything genuinely beautiful need supplementing?...

Does anything genuinely beautiful need supplementing? No more than justice does-or truth, or kindness, or humility. Are any of those improved by being praised? Or damaged by contempt? Is an emerald suddenly flawed if no one admires it? Or gold, or ivory, or purple? Lyres? Knives? Flowers? Bushes?

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(Hays translation) IV, 20
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
3 months 1 week ago
Logical consequences are the scarecrows of...

Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
4 months 2 weeks ago
The medieval peasant prior to the...

The medieval peasant prior to the 13th century does not compare himself to the feudal lord, nor does the artisan compare himself to the knight. ... From the king down to the hangman and the prostitute, everyone is "noble" in the sense that he considers himself as irreplaceable. In the "system of free competition," on the other hand, the notions on life's tasks and their value are not fundamental, they are but secondary derivations of the desire of all to surpass all the others. No "place" is more than a transitory point in this universal chase.

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L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 56
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
4 months 3 weeks ago
Let us not pretend to doubt...

Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.

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Vol. V, par. 265
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 3 weeks ago
Considering the general tendency to multiply...

Considering the general tendency to multiply offices and dependencies and to increase expense to the ultimate term of burden which the citizen can bear, it behooves us to avail ourselves of every occasion which presents itself for taking off the surcharge; that it never may be seen here that, after leaving to labor the smallest portion of its earnings on which it can subsist, Government shall itself consume the whole residue of what it was instituted to guard.

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Thomas Jefferson's First State of the Union Address
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 3 weeks ago
Look within. Within is the fountain...

Look within. Within is the fountain of the good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

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VII, 59
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months 3 weeks ago
Another thing wherein they shew their...

Another thing wherein they shew their love of dominion, is, their desire to have things to be theirs: They would have propriety and possession, pleasing themselves with the power which that seems to give, and the right that they thereby have, to dispose of them as they please. He that has not observ's these two humours working very betimes in children, has taken little notice of their actions: And he who thinks that these two roots of almost all the injustice and contention that so disturb human life, are not early to be weeded out, and contrary habits introduc'd, neglects the proper season to lay the foundations of a good and worthy man.

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Sec. 105
Philosophical Maxims
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