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Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 1 week ago
Money, as a matter of principle,...

Money, as a matter of principle, makes everything the same.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month 2 weeks ago
So long as we love we...

So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.

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"Lay Morals" Ch. 4, in Lay Morals and Other Essays (1911).
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
Any fool can make a ruleAnd...

Any fool can make a ruleAnd every fool will mind it.

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February 3, 1860
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
But, if it will help...
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Main Content / General
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
1 week 3 days ago
Credit expansion can bring about a...

Credit expansion can bring about a temporary boom. But such a fictitious prosperity must end in a general depression of trade, a slump.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 1 day ago
The most important feature of natural...

The most important feature of natural selection is that it is a process of drift. Evolution has no end-point or direction, so if the development of society is an evolutionary process it is one that is going nowhere.

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An Old Chaos: Humanism and Flying Saucers (p. 78)
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 1 day ago
If our universe is one of...

If our universe is one of many, unlike others in containing observers like ourselves, there is no need to posit a designer. Most universes will be too chaotic to allow the emergence of life or mind. In that case, the fact that humans exist in this universe needs no special explanation.

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Sweet Morality (p. 222)
Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
4 months 1 week ago
I have always been..

I have always been of the opinion that infamy earned by doing what is right is not infamy at all, but glory.

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Speech I
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 1 week ago
The philosophers who wished us to...

The philosophers who wished us to have the gods for our friends rank the friendship of the holy angels in the fourth circle of society, advancing now from the three circles of society on earth to the universe, and embracing heaven itself. And in this friendship we have indeed no fear that the angels will grieve us by their death or deterioration. But as we cannot mingle with them as familiarly as with men (which itself is one of the grievances of this life), and as Satan, as we read, sometimes transforms himself into an angel of light, to tempt those whom it is necessary to discipline, or just to deceive, there is great need of God's mercy to preserve us from making friends of demons in disguise, while we fancy we have good angels for our friends; for the astuteness and deceitfulness of these wicked spirits is equalled by their hurtfulness.

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XIX, 9
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 3 weeks ago
...they cudgel their brains with absurd...

...they cudgel their brains with absurd questions, such as, for instance, why God did not make the world many centuries earlier. They persuade themselves that it is easy to conceive, to be sure, how God may discern what is present, that is, what is actual in the time in which he is, but how He may foresee what is future, that is, what is actual in the time in which He is not yet, they deem an intellectual difficulty; as if the existence of the Necessary Being descended through all the moments of an imaginary time, and, having already exhausted a part of His duration, saw before Him the eternity He was yet to live simultaneously with the present events of the world. All these difficulties upon proper insight into the notion of time vanish like smoke.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 2 weeks ago
Although a poem be not made...

Although a poem be not made by counting of syllables upon the fingers, yet "numbers" is the most poetical synonym we have for verse, and "measure" the most significant equivalent for beauty, for goodness, and perhaps even for truth. Those early and profound philosophers, the followers of Pythagoras, saw the essence of all things in number, and it was by weight, measure, and number, as we read in the Bible, that the Creator first brought Nature out of the void.

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Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900), p. 251
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 3 weeks ago
I maintain that in every special...

I maintain that in every special natural doctrine only so much science proper is to be met with as mathematics; for... science proper, especially of nature, requires a pure portion, lying at the foundation of the empirical, and based upon à priori knowledge of natural things. ...the conception should be constructed. But the cognition of the reason through construction of conceptions is mathematical. A pure philosophy of nature in general, namely, one that only investigates what constitutes a nature in general, may thus be possible without mathematics; but a pure doctrine of nature respecting determinate natural things (corporeal doctrine and mental doctrine), is only possible by means of mathematics; and as in every natural doctrine only so much science proper is to be met with therein as there is cognition à priori, a doctrine of nature can only contain so much science proper as there is in it of applied mathematics.

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Preface, Tr. Ernest Belfort Bax, 1883
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 6 days ago
Happy is that City that hath...

Happy is that City that hath a wise man to govern it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and...

Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!

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Vol. I, Ch. 24, Section 3, pg. 652.
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 4 weeks ago
All sentiment is right; because sentiment...

All sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real, wherever a man is conscious of it. But all determinations of the understanding are not right; because they have a reference to something beyond themselves, to wit, real matter of fact; and are not always conformable to that standard.

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Part I, Essay 23: Of The Standard of Taste
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 2 weeks ago
When Socrates and his two great...

When Socrates and his two great disciples composed a system of rational ethics they were hardly proposing practical legislation for mankind...They were merely writing an eloquent epitaph for their country.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
3 days ago
There is something in the nature...

There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.

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p. 224
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
Men fear thought as they fear...

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. It sees man, a feeble speck, surrounded by unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears itself proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the universe. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

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pp. 178-179
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 weeks 2 days ago
I knew Robert Burns, and I...

I knew Robert Burns, and I knew my father. Yet were you to ask me which had the greater natural faculty, I might perhaps actually pause before replying. Burns had an infinitely wider education, my father a far wholesomer. Besides, the one was a man of musical utterance; the other wholly a man of action, with speech subservient thereto. Never, of all the men I have seen, has one come personally in my way in whom the endowment from nature and the arena from fortune were so utterly out of all proportion. I have said this often, and partly know it. As a man of speculation - had culture ever unfolded him - he must have gone wild and desperate as Burns; hut he was a man of conduct, and work keeps all right. What strange shapable creatures we are!

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 2 days ago
Every other knowledge is harmful to...

Every other knowledge is harmful to him who does not have knowledge of goodness.

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Ch. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
1 week 3 days ago
No social co-operation under the division...

No social co-operation under the division of labour is possible when some people or unions of people are granted the right to prevent by violence and the threat of violence other people from working. When enforced by violence, a strike in vital branches of production or a general strike are tantamount to a revolutionary destruction of society.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 weeks ago
The literate man is a sucker...

The literate man is a sucker for propaganda...You cannot propagandize a native. You can sell him rum and trinkets, but you cannot sell him ideas.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 3 weeks ago
In our monogamous part of the...

In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 27, § 370 Variant translation: To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 weeks 2 days ago
Our "Theories of Taste," as they...

Our "Theories of Taste," as they are called, wherein the deep, infinite, unspeakable Love of Wisdom and Beauty, which dwells in all men, is "explained," made mechanically visible, from "Association" and the like, ...

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 3 weeks ago
Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless...

Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?

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"The Will to Believe" p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 months 1 week ago
Both are torn halves of an...

Both are torn halves of an integral freedom, to which however they do not add up.

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On high culture and popular culture, in a letter to Walter Benjamin
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
2 months 2 weeks ago
To be old is a glorious...

To be old is a glorious thing when one has not unlearned what it means to begin, this old man had perhaps first learned it thoroughly in old age.

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p. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
2 weeks 5 days ago
It is the sidereal day, that...

It is the sidereal day, that is, the duration of the rotation of the earth, which is the constant unit of time. ...However ...many astronomers ...think that the tides act as a check on our globe, and that the rotation of the earth is becoming slower and slower. Thus would be explained the apparent acceleration of the motion of the moon...

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 2 weeks ago
The Master said, "Hard is...

The Master said, "Hard is it to deal with him, who will stuff himself with food the whole day, without applying his mind to anything good! Are there not gamesters and chess players? To be one of these would still be better than doing nothing at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
3 months 3 weeks ago
To what shall the character of...

To what shall the character of utility be ascribed, if not to that which is a source of pleasure?

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Théorie des peines et des récompenses (1811); translation by Richard Smith, The Rationale of Reward, J. & H. L. Hunt, London, 1825, Bk. 3, Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
4 months 2 days ago
This return of Republics back to...

This return of Republics back to their principles also results from the simple virtue of one man, without depending on any law that excites him to any execution: none the less, they are of such influence and example that good men desire to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life contrary to those examples.

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Book 3, Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is the fantasy of seizing...

It is the fantasy of seizing reality live that continues-ever since Narcissus bent over his spring. Surprising the real in order to immobilize it, suspending the real in the expiration of its double. You bend over the hologram like God over his creature: only God has this power of passing through walls, through people, and finding Himself immaterially in the beyond. We dream of passing through ourselves and of finding ourselves in the beyond: the day when your holographic double will be there in space, eventually moving and talking, you will have realized this miracle. Of course, it will no longer be a dream, so its charm will be lost.

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"Holograms," p. 105
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
3 months 3 weeks ago
An honest man nearly always thinks...

An honest man nearly always thinks justly.

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 277.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
1 week 3 days ago
If one takes pleasure in calling...

If one takes pleasure in calling the gold standard a "barbarous relic," one cannot object to the application of the same term to every historically determined institution. Then the fact that the British speak English - and not Danish, German, or French - is a barbarous relic too, and every Briton who opposes the substitution of Esperanto for English is no less dogmatic and orthodox than those who do not wax rapturous about the plans for a managed currency.

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The Gold Standard - LvMI, excerpt from chapter 17 of Human Action
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
The same feeling of not belonging,...

The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don't know where that elsewhere is.

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Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
3 weeks ago
The self-evident truth which makes men...

The self-evident truth which makes men invincible is that inalienably they are inviolate persons.

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Ch. XVII: "On This Rock", §2, p. 375
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks ago
Everything intercepts us from ourselves...

Everything intercepts us from ourselves.

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1833
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 2 weeks ago
The idea of Christ is much...

The idea of Christ is much older than Christianity.

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The Idea of Christ in the Gospels
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
2 months 2 days ago
I think part of the appeal…

I think part of the appeal of mathematical logic is that the formulas look mysterious - you write backward Es!

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Putnam as quoted in: Julian Baggini, Jeremy Stangroom (2005) What Philosophers Think. p. 233
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 3 weeks ago
I tell you in truth: all...

I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
The more one has suffered, the...

The more one has suffered, the less one demands. To protest is a sign one has traversed no hell.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 weeks ago
There is but one law for...

There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature, and of nations.

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28 May 1794
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 2 weeks ago
The aim of philosophy is to...

The aim of philosophy is to erect a wall at the point where language stops anyway.

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Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 187
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
This much is certain, the ERA...

This much is certain, the ERA OF REVOLUTION has now FAIRLY OPENED IN EUROPE once more. And the general state of affairs is good.

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Letter to Friedrich Engels (13 February 1863), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 41. Letters 1860-64 (2010), p. 453
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 weeks ago
If a work of art is...

If a work of art is to explore new environments, it is not to be regarded as a blueprint but rather as a form of action-painting.

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To Wilfred Watson, October 6 1965. Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 325
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 4 days ago
We do not think good metaphors...

We do not think good metaphors are anything very important, but I think that a good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on...

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E 91 Variant translation: A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 2 weeks ago
If the flesh came into being...

If the flesh came into being because of spirit, it is a wonder. But if spirit came into being because of the body, it is a wonder of wonders. Indeed, I am amazed at how this great wealth has made its home in this poverty.

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Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
2 months 1 week ago
The fear of being alone, or...

The fear of being alone, or of being unloved, had caused women of all races to passively accept sexism and sexist oppression.

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Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
2 months 3 weeks ago
The illustrious archbishop of Cambray was...

The illustrious archbishop of Cambray was of more worth than his chambermaid, and there are few of us that would hesitate to pronounce, if his palace were in flames, and the life of only one of them could be preserved, which of the two ought to be preferred ... Supposing the chambermaid had been my wife, my mother or my benefactor. This would not alter the truth of the proposition. The life of Fenelon would still be more valuable than that of the chambermaid; and justice, pure, unadulterated justice, would still have preferred that which was most valuable. Justice would have taught me to save the life of Fenelon at the expence of the other. What magic is there in the pronoun "my", to overturn the decisions of everlasting truth?

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Vol.1, bk. 2, ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 1 week ago
It is quite true that, to...

It is quite true that, to the best of my judgment, the argumentation which applies to brutes holds equally good of men; and, therefore, that all states of consciousness in us, as in them, are immediately caused by molecular changes of the brain-substance. It seems to me that in men, as in brutes, there is no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in the motion of the matter of the organism. If these positions are well based, it follows that our mental conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which takes place automatically in the organism; and that, to take an extreme illustration, the feeling we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of that act.

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Philosophical Maxims
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