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Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
The criticism of religion ends with...

The criticism of religion ends with the doctrine that man is the supreme being for man, hence the categorical imperative to overthrow all those conditions in which man is degraded, enslaved, neglected, contemptible being-conditions which can hardly be better described than in the exclamation of a Frenchman on the occasion of a proposed tax upon dogs: 'Wretched dogs! They want to treat you like men!'

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 4 weeks ago
The debates of that great assembly...

The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies.

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Book One, Chapter XXI.
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 month 2 weeks ago
Once you had read the Psychopathology...

Once you had read the Psychopathology of Everyday Life, you knew that everyday life was psychopathology.

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Humboldt's Gift (1975) [Penguin Classics, 1996, ISBN 0-140-18944-0], p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
2 months 3 weeks ago
Feuerbach is saying: No, wait a...

Feuerbach is saying: No, wait a minute - if you are going to be allowed to go on living as you are living, then you also have to admit that you are not Christians. Feuerbach has understood the requirements but cannot force himself to submit to them - ergo, he prefers to renounce being a Christian. And now, no matter how great a responsibility he must bear, he takes a position that is not unsound, that is, it is wrong of established Christendom to say that Feuerbach is attacking Christianity; it is not true, he is attacking the Christians by demonstrating that their lives do not correspond to the teachings of Christianity.

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Soren Kierkegaard, Journals X2A 163
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 2 weeks ago
The little world of childhood with...

The little world of childhood with its familiar surroundings is a model of the greater world. The more intensively the family has stamped its character upon the child, the more it will tend to feel and see its earlier miniature world again in the bigger world of adult life. Naturally this is not a conscious, intellectual process.

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The Theory of Psychoanalysis
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 1 week ago
You cannot think without abstractions; accordingly,...

You cannot think without abstractions; accordingly, it is of the utmost importance to be vigilant in critically revising your modes of abstraction. It is here that philosophy finds its niche as essential to the healthy progress of society. It is the critic of abstractions. A civilisation which cannot burst through its current abstractions is doomed to sterility.

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Ch. 4: "The Eighteenth Century", pp. 82-83
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months 3 weeks ago
Properly understood, then, the desire to...

Properly understood, then, the desire to act justly derives in part from the desire to express most fully what we are or can be, namely free and equal rational beings with the liberty to choose.

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Chapter IV, Section 40, p. 256
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 3 weeks ago
That I should by necessity be...

That I should by necessity be either wise and good, or foolish or vicious, without having in one case or the other merit or fault - this it was that filled me with aversion and horror.The determination of my actions by a cause out of myself, whose manifestations were again determined by other causes - this it was from which I so violently revolted.The freedom which was not mine, but that of a foreign power, and, in that, only a conditional, half freedom - this it was with which I could not rest satisfied. I myself - that which in this system only appears as the manifestation of a higher existence, I will be independent, - will be something, not by another or through another, but of myself.

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Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 3 weeks ago
If I were to give a...

If I were to give a simple formula or recipe for distinguishing between what I consider to be admissible plans for social reform and inadmissible Utopian blueprints, I might say: Work for the elimination of concrete evils rather than for the realization of abstract goods. Do not aim at establishing happiness by political means. Rather aim at the elimination of concrete miseries.

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p. 385
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 3 weeks ago
Each visitor performed the ceremony of...

Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of them cared about; Anna Pávlovna observed these greetings with mournful and solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of them in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health of Her Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious duty and did not return to her the whole evening.

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Bk. I, Ch. II
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 3 weeks ago
Whatever is known to us by...

Whatever is known to us by consciousness, is known beyond possibility of question. What one sees or feels, whether bodily or mentally, one cannot but be sure that one sees or feels. No science is required for the purpose of establishing such truths; no rules of art can render our knowledge of them more certain than it is in itself. There is no logic for this portion of our knowledge.

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p. 4
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month 2 days ago
[O]ne might naively suppose that a...

[O]ne might naively suppose that a negative utilitarian would welcome human extinction. But only (trans)humans - or our potential superintelligent successors - are technically capable of phasing out the cruelties of the rest of the living world on Earth. And only (trans)humans - or rather our potential superintelligent successors - are technically capable of assuming stewardship of our entire Hubble volume.

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"Unsorted Postings", Facebook, pre-2014
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 2 weeks ago
A utopia of judicial reticence: take...

A utopia of judicial reticence: take away life, but prevent the patient from feeling it; deprive the prisoner of all rights, but do not inflict pain; impose penalties free of all pain. Recourse to psycho-pharmacology and to various physiological 'disconnectors', even if it is temporary, is a logical consequence of this 'non-corporal' penalty.

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Chapter One, The Spectacle of the Scaffold
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
2 months 2 weeks ago
Communism is the doctrine of the...

Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
There lies before us, if we...

There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
Each of us must pay for...

Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later, he will regret not having left it intact.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 1 day ago
By God's grace, I know Satan...

By God's grace, I know Satan very well. If Satan can turn God's Word upside down and pervert the Scriptures, what will he do with my words -- or the words of others?

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Confession Concerning Christ's Supper, Part 3. Robert E. Smith, tr. Dr. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtsusgabe. (Weimar: Herman Boehlaus Nachfolger, 1909), pp. 499-500.
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 2 weeks ago
As men, we are all equal...

As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.

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Maxim 1
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 weeks ago
In looking at this wreck of...

In looking at this wreck of Governments in all European countries, there is one consideration that suggests itself, sadly elucidative of our modern epoch. These Governments, we may be well assured, have gone to anarchy for this one reason inclusive of every other whatsoever, That they were not wise enough; that the spiritual talent embarked in them, the virtue, heroism, intellect, or by whatever other synonyms we designate it, was not adequate,-probably had long been inadequate, and so in its dim helplessness had suffered, or perhaps invited falsity to introduce itself; had suffered injustices, and solecisms, and contradictions of the Divine Fact, to accumulate in more than tolerable measure; whereupon said Governments were overset, and declared before all creatures to be too false.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mozi
Mozi
1 day ago
If every one in the world...

If every one in the world will love universally; states not attacking one another; houses not disturbing one another; thieves and robbers becoming extinct; emperor and ministers, fathers and sons, all being affectionate and filial -- if all this comes to pass the world will be orderly. Therefore, how can the wise man who has charge of governing the empire fail to restrain hate and encourage love? So, when there is universal love in the world it will be orderly, and when there is mutual hate in the world it will be disorderly.

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Book 4; Universal Love I
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 2 weeks ago
He also said to them, "You...

He also said to them, "You completely invalidate God's command in order to maintain your tradition! For Moses said: Honor your father and your mother; and, Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must be put to death.

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7:9-10
Philosophical Maxims
Averroes
Averroes
4 months 1 week ago
To master this instrument the religious...

To master this instrument the religious thinker must make a preliminary study of logic, just as the lawyer must study legal reasoning. This is no more heretical in the one case than in the other. And logic must be learned from the ancient masters, regardless of the fact that they were not Muslims.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 weeks ago
Every noble work is at first...

Every noble work is at first impossible.

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From Past and Present (1843), Chapter XI : Labour
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
2 weeks ago
These three classes of problems-determination of...

These three classes of problems-determination of significant fact, matching of facts with theory, and articulation of theory-exhaust, I think, the literature of normal science, both empirical and theoretical. They do not, of course, quite exhaust the entire literature of science. There are also extraordinary problems, and it may well be their resolution that makes the scientific enterprise as a whole so particularly worthwhile. But extraordinary problems are not to be had for the asking. They emerge only on special occasions prepared by the advance of normal research.

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p. 34
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 weeks ago
It is the very joy of...

It is the very joy of man's heart to admire, where he can; nothing so lifts him from all his mean imprisonments, were it but for moments, as true admiration.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 3 weeks ago
The homosexual never thinks of himself...

The homosexual never thinks of himself when someone is branded in his presence with the name homosexual. ...His sexual tastes will doubtless lead him to enter into relationships with this suspect category, but he would like to make use of them without being likened to them. Here, too, the ban that is cast on certain men by society has destroyed all possibility of reciprocity among them. Shame isolates.

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Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
2 months 2 weeks ago
There is no substitute for the...

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.

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A Severed Head (1961); 1976, p. 181.
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 1 week ago
Certainly He says this for me,...

Certainly He says this for me, for thee, for this other man, since He bears His body, the Church. Unless you imagine, brethren, that when He said: My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from (Matt. 26:39), it was the Lord that feared to die. . . . But Paul longed to die, that he might be with Christ. What? The Apostle desires to die, and Christ Himself should fear death? What can this mean, except that He bore our infirmity in Himself, and uttered these words for those who are in His body and still fear death? It is from these that the voice came; it was the voice of His members, not of the Head. When He said, My soul is sorrowful unto death (Matt. 26:38), He manifested Himself in thee, and thee in Himself. And when He said, My God, my God, why has Thou forsaken Me? (Matt. 27:46), the words He uttered on the cross were not His own, but ours.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 3 weeks ago
The force of the word World,...

The force of the word World, as commonly used, of itself falls in with us. For no one will attribute accidents to the World as parts, but as determinations, states; hence the so-called world of the ego, unrestrained by the single substance and its accidents, is not very appositely called a World, unless, perhaps, an imaginary one.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months 3 weeks ago
This is a long book, not...

This is a long book, not only in pages.

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Preface, pg. viii
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 months 2 weeks ago
We are accustomed to speak of...

We are accustomed to speak of ideas as reproduced, as passed from mind to mind, as similar or dissimilar to one another, and, in short, as if they were substantial things; nor can any reasonable objection be raised to such expressions. But taking the word "idea" in the sense of an event in an individual consciousness, it is clear that an idea once past is gone forever, and any supposed recurrence of it is another idea. These two ideas are not present in the same state of consciousness, and therefore cannot possibly be compared.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
To hope is to contradict the...

To hope is to contradict the future.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months 3 weeks ago
Ideally a just constitution would be...

Ideally a just constitution would be a just procedure arranged to insure a just outcome.

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Chapter IV, Section 31, pg. 197
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 2 weeks ago
Treat your friend as if he...

Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy.

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Maxim 401
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month ago
The idea of politics as a...

The idea of politics as a conservation in which the collision of opinions is moderated and accommodated, in which what is sought is not truth but peace, has been almost entirely lost, and supplanted by a legalist paradigm in which all political claims and conflicts are modelled in the jargon of rights.

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'Oakeshott as a Liberal' (p.80)
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 1 day ago
Justice is a temporary thing that...

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

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On Marriage
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 2 weeks ago
Knowledge is in the end...

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 4 weeks ago
In America the majority raises formidable...

In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.

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Chapter XV, in a section titled Tryanny of the Majority.
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
2 weeks 3 days ago
All that is not thought is...

All that is not thought is pure nothingness; since we can think only thought and all the words we use to speak of things can express only thoughts, to say there is something other than thought, is therefore an affirmation which can have no meaning.And yet-strange contradiction for those who believe in time-geologic history shows us that life is only a short episode between two eternities of death, and that, even in this episode, conscious thought has lasted and will last only a moment. Thought is only a gleam in the midst of a long night. But it is this gleam which is everything.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
4 months 3 weeks ago
The whole business of the kingly...

The whole business of the kingly weaving is comprised in this and this alone: in never allowing the self-restrained characters to be separated from the courageous, but in weaving them together by common beliefs and honors and dishonors and opinions and interchanges of pledges, thus making of them a smooth and, as we say, well-woven fabric, and then entrusting to them in common forever the offices of the state.

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Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
1 week 6 days ago
Here is a fulfillment of long...

Here is a fulfillment of long centuries of civilization and culture; here, in romantic love, more than the triumph of thought or the victories of power is the topmost reach of human beings.

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Ch. 2 : On Youth
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
In relation to any act of...

In relation to any act of life, the mind acts as a killjoy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 3 weeks ago
So-called "realist" photography does not capture...

So-called "realist" photography does not capture the "what is." Instead, it is preoccupied with what should not be, like the reality of suffering for example.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 3 weeks ago
China has been long one of...

China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous countries in the world. It seems, however, to have been long stationary. Marco Polo, who visited it more than five hundred years ago, describes its cultivation, industry, and populousness, almost in the same terms in which they are described by travellers in the present times.

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Chapter VIII, p. 86.
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 month 2 weeks ago
Our media make crisis chatter out...

Our media make crisis chatter out of news and fill our minds with anxious phantoms of the real thing - a summit in Helsinki, a treaty in Egypt, a constitutional crisis in India, a vote in the U.N., the financial collapse of New York. We can't avoid being politicized (a word as murky as the condition which it describes) because it is necessary after all to know what is going on. Worse yet, what is going on will not let us alone. Neither the facts nor the deformations, the insidious platitudes of the media (tormenting because the underlying realities are so large and so terrible), can be screened out. The study of literature itself is heavily "politicized."

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To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account (1976) [Viking/Penguin, 1998, ISBN 0-141-18075-7], p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
Exchange value forms the substance of...

Exchange value forms the substance of money, and exchange value is wealth.

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Notebook II, The Chapter on Money, p. 141.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 weeks ago
The present is always invisible because...

The present is always invisible because it's environmental. No environment is perceptible, simply because it saturates the whole field of attention.

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Mademoiselle: the magazine for the smart young woman, Volume 64, 1966, p. 114
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
2 months 1 week ago
If I knew of…

If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman, because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.

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I.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 4 weeks ago
Thou shouldst not....
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Main Content / General
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
4 months 2 days ago
I consider as lovers of books...

I consider as lovers of books not those who keep their books hidden in their store-chests and never handle them, but those who, by nightly as well as daily use thumb them, batter them, wear them out, who fill out all the margins with annotations of many kinds, and who prefer the marks of a fault they have erased to a neat copy full of faults.

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Letter to an unidentified friend (1489), as translated in Collected Works of Erasmus (1974), p. 58
Philosophical Maxims
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