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Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
Only one thing matters: learning to...

Only one thing matters: learning to be the loser.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Every ideology is contrary to human...

Every ideology is contrary to human psychology.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 weeks ago
What worries me about religion is...

What worries me about religion is that it teaches people to be satisfied with not understanding the world they live in.

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Heart Of The Matter: God Under The Microscope | BBC
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
To travel is to discover that...

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong.

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Part II: Malaya,
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
2 months 2 weeks ago
The hopes of the right-minded may...

The hopes of the right-minded may be realized, those of fools are impossible.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 3 weeks ago
One does not discover the absurd...

One does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual of happiness. "What! — by such narrow ways — ?" There is but one world, however. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 weeks ago
The fact that life evolved out...

The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.

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From tail to tale on the path of pilgrims in life, The Scotsman
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
3 weeks 6 days ago
I was taught in the sixth...

I was taught in the sixth grade that we had a standing army of just over a hundred thousand men and that the generals had nothing to say about what was done in Washington. I was taught to be proud of that and to pity Europe for having more than a million men under arms and spending all their money on airplanes and tanks. I simply never unlearned junior civics. I still believe in it. I got a very good grade.

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As quoted by James Lundquist in Kurt Vonnegut
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 week ago
Feeling does not succeed in converting...

Feeling does not succeed in converting consolation into truth, nor does reason succeed in converting truth into consolation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 3 weeks ago
To free a man from error...

To free a man from error is to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth. Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief to the man who harbors it. Then give up deceiving people; confess ignorance of what you don't know, and leave everyone to form his own articles of faith for himself. Perhaps they won't turn out so bad, especially as they'll rub one another's corners down, and mutually rectify mistakes. The existence of many views will at any rate lay a foundation of tolerance. Those who possess knowledge and capacity may betake themselves to the study of philosophy, or even in their own persons carry the history of philosophy a step further.

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"Religion: A Dialogue." Variant translation: To free a man from error does not mean to take something from him, but to give him something.
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 2 weeks ago
I leave you but the sound...

I leave you but the sound of many a word In mocking echoes haply overheard, I sang to heaven. My exile made me free,from world to world, from all worlds carried me.

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The Poet's Testament
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
I strongly suspect that most of...

I strongly suspect that most of the great knowers of Suchness paid very little attention to art.... (To a person whose transfigured and transfiguring mind can see the All in every this, the first-rateness or tenth-rateness of even a religious painting will be a matter of the most sovereign indifference.) Art, I suppose, is only for beginners, or else for those resolute dead-enders, who have made up their minds to be content with the ersatz of Suchness, with symbols rather than with what they signify, with the elegantly composed recipe in lieu of actual dinner.

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Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
2 months 2 days ago
It is manifest that every soul...

It is manifest that every soul has a certain continuity with the soul of the Universe, so that it must be understood to exist and to be included not only there where it liveth and feeleth, but it is also by its essence and substance diffused throughout immensity. The power of each soul is itself somehow present afar in the Universe. It is not mixed, yet is there in some presence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is only when we think...

It is only when we think abstractly that we have such a high opinion of man. Of men in the concrete, most of us think the vast majority very bad. Civilized states spend more than half their revenue on killing each other's citizens. Consider the long history of the activities inspired by moral fervour: human sacrifices, persecutions of heretics, witch-hunts, pogroms leading up to wholesale extermination by poison gases ... Are these abominations, and the ethical doctrines by which they are prompted, really evidence of an intelligent Creator? And can we really wish that the men who practised them should live for ever? The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident; but if it is the outcome of a deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis.

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Essay Do We Survive Death?, 1936
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
1 month 1 week ago
Optimism is an alienated form of...

Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair. If one truly responds to man and his future, ie, concernedly and "responsibly." one can respond only by faith or by despair. Rational faith as well as rational despair are based on the most thorough, critical knowledge of all the factors that are relevant for the survival of man.

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p. 483
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 week ago
Not only are we unable to...

Not only are we unable to conceive of the full and living God as masculine simply, but we are unable to conceive of Him as individual simply, as the projection of a solitary I, an unsocial I, an I that is in reality an abstract I. My living I is an I that is really a We; my living personal I lives only in other, of other, and by other I's; I am sprung from a multitude of ancestors. I carry them within me in extract, and at the same time I carry within me, potentially, a multitude of descendants, and God, the projection of my I to the infinite - or rather I, the projection of God to the finite - must also be a multitude. Hence, in order to save the personality of God - that is to say, in order to save the living God - faith's need - the need of the feeling and the imagination - of conceiving Him and feeling Him as possessed of a certain internal multiplicity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Good bye, proud world! I'm going...

Good bye, proud world! I'm going home; Thou art not my friend; I am not thine.

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Good-bye, st. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
Poetry - No definition of poetry...

Poetry - No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know. The poet does not need to see how meadows are something else than earth, grass, and water, but how they are thus much. He does not need discover that potato blows are as beautiful as violets, as the farmer thinks, but only how good potato blows are. The poem is drawn out from under the feet of the poet, his whole weight has rested on this ground. It has a logic more severe than the logician's. You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought.

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January 26, 1840
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 3 weeks ago
Human beings have faculties more elevated...

Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification. I do not, indeed, consider the Epicureans to have been by any means faultless in drawing out their scheme of consequences from the utilitarian principle. To do this in any sufficient manner, many Stoic, as well as Christian elements require to be included. But there is no known Epicurean theory of life which does not assign to the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 4 weeks ago
Look round the world: contemplate the...

Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions, to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy, which ravishes into admiration all men, who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence.

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Philo to Cleanthes, Part II
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
Experience teaches only the teachable... Tragedy...

Experience teaches only the teachable...

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Tragedy and the Whole Truth
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 3 weeks ago
The fundament upon which all our...

The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 1, § 1
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 weeks 2 days ago
The metropolis today is a classroom;...

The metropolis today is a classroom; the ads are its teachers. The traditional classroom is an obsolete detention home, a feudal dungeon.

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(p. 12)
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 3 weeks ago
Since he is unable to be...

Since he is unable to be the beloved, he will become the lover.

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p. 90
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 3 weeks ago
Capital is money, capital is commodities....

Capital is money, capital is commodities. ... By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

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Vol. I, Ch. 4, pp. 171-172
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
2 months 4 weeks ago
He who seeks equality between unequals...

He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.

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Ch. 9, Of Aristocracy, Continuation
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months ago
There is in fact a manly...

There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the lesser to the rank of the greater. But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.

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Chapter III, Part I
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
There are many people...
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Main Content / General
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
2 months 4 weeks ago
Let us not forget what befits...

Let us not forget what befits our present state in the pursuit of vain fancies. Mankind has its place in the sequence of things; childhood has its place in the sequence of human life; the man must be treated as a man and the child as a child. Give each his place, and keep him there. Control human passions according to man's nature; that is all we can do for his welfare. The rest depends on external forces, which are beyond our control.

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is difficult….

It is difficult to speak of the universal specifically.

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Line 128
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
1 month 3 weeks ago
Freedom is the absolute right of...

Freedom is the absolute right of every human being to seek no other sanction for his actions but his own conscience, to determine these actions solely by his own will, and consequently to owe his first responsibility to himself alone.

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As quoted in Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, Daniel Guérin, New York: NY, Monthly Review Press (1970) p. 31
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
2 months 4 weeks ago
What good would it be to...

What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?

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A Lasting Peace Through the Federation of Europe, 1756
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
1 month 1 week ago
My own book Women, Race and...

My own book Women, Race and Class was one of many that were published during that era, including, to name only a few, This Bridge Called My Back, edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherrie Moraga, the work of bell hooks and Michelle Wallace, and the anthology All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies. So behind this concept of intersectionality is a rich history of struggle. A history of conversations among activists within movement formations, and with and among academics as well.

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Angela Davis Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (2015) p 19
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
3 months 3 days ago
No circumstance is ever…

No circumstance is ever so desperate that one cannot nurture some spark of hope.

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Act I, scene i
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 3 weeks ago
The application of algebra to geometry......

The application of algebra to geometry... far more than any of his metaphysical speculations, has immortalized the name of Descartes, and constitutes the greatest single step ever made in the progress of the exact sciences.

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An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865) as quoted in 5th ed. (1878) p. 617.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
1 month 3 weeks ago
The blindness of those who think...

The blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple ones becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably in every respect... Yet is the one changed in the course of a few years into the other: changed so gradually, that at no moment can it be said - Now the seed ceases to be, and the tree exists.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 weeks ago
Soon fades the spell, soon comes...

Soon fades the spell, soon comes the night: Say will it not be then the same, Whether we played the black or white,Whether we lost or won the game?

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Sermon in a Churchyard, st. 8 (1825), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. II (1860), p. 390
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
A man might say, with enough...

A man might say, with enough truth to justify a joke: "Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know." But it should be added that philosophical speculation as to what we do not yet know has shown itself a valuable preliminary to exact scientific knowledge.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 4 days ago
Read not to contradict and confute,...

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.

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Of Studies
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 month 3 weeks ago
What is Nature? An encyclopedical, systematic...

What is Nature? An encyclopedical, systematic Index or Plan of our Spirit. Why will we content us with the mere catalogue of our Treasures? Let us contemplate them ourselves, and in all ways elaborate and use them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 3 weeks ago
Thus every action must be due...

Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 3 weeks ago
In brief, it is my thesis...

In brief, it is my thesis that human misery is the most urgent problem of a rational public policy and that happiness is not such a problem.

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p. 485
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 2 weeks ago
In the Greek conception of parrhesia......

In the Greek conception of parrhesia... truth-having is guaranteed by the possession of... moral qualities... required... to know... and... convey such truth...

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Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
2 months 2 weeks ago
Human social institutions can effect the...

Human social institutions can effect the course of human evolution. Just as climate-change, food supply, predators, and other natural forces of selection have molded our nature, so too can our culture.

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Chapter 6, A New Understanding Of Ethics, p. 172
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 3 weeks ago
I recognize the necessity of animal...

I recognize the necessity of animal experiments with my mind but not with my heart.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 3 days ago
There is no pleasure to me...

There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 1 week ago
O sons of Peace, sons of...

O sons of Peace, sons of the One Catholic [Church], walk in your way, and sing as you walk. Travelers do this in order to keep up their spirits.

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p.427
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 days ago
Cheating ageing by a low-calorie diet,...

Cheating ageing by a low-calorie diet, uploading one's mind into a super-computer, migrating into outer space ... Longing for everlasting life, humans show that they remain the death-defined animal.

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Sweet Morality (p. 235)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
2 months 3 weeks ago
An army of principles will penetrate...

An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot; it will succeed where diplomatic management would fall: it is neither the Rhine, the Channel, nor the ocean that can arrest its progress: it will march on the horizon of the world, and it will conquer.

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Means by Which the Fund Is to Be Created
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 weeks ago
Your Constitution is all sail and...

Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.

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Letter to H.S. Randall, author of a Life of Thomas Jefferson
Philosophical Maxims
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