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Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 1 week ago
The pornographic body lacks any symbolism....

The pornographic body lacks any symbolism. The ritualized body, by contrast, is a splendid stage, with secrets and deities written into it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks 1 day ago
All things are changing; and thou...

All things are changing; and thou thyself art in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction and the whole universe to.

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IX, 19
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 3 weeks ago
The similarity between Christ and Socrates...

The similarity between Christ and Socrates consists essentially in their dissimilarity. Just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 1 week ago
People seem not to see...
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Main Content / General
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 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
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
1 month 3 weeks ago
The familial union presents as well...

The familial union presents as well a mixture of inconvenient ages and characters that inhibit conversation. Morality engenders a frigid atmosphere, as in all places where it reigns.

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Oeuvres completetes de Charles Fourier
Philosophical Maxims
Iamblichus
Iamblichus
3 weeks 2 days ago
If the potential of every number...

If the potential of every number is in the monad, then the monad would be intelligible number in the strict sense, since it is not yet manifesting anything actual, but everything conceptually together in it.

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On the Monad
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
1 month 6 days ago
Only when an ideal of peace...

Only when an ideal of peace is born in the minds of the peoples will the institutions set up to maintain this peace effectively fulfill the function expected of them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry George
Henry George
3 weeks 3 days ago
But in life, as we are...

But in life, as we are cognizant of it, mental development can go but a little way. The mind hardly begins to awake ere the bodily powers decline - it but becomes dimly conscious of the vast fields before it, but begins to learn and use its strength, to recognize relations and extend its sympathies, when, with the death of the body, it passes away. Unless there is something more, there seems here a break, a failure. Whether it be a Humboldt or a Herschel, a Moses who looks from Pisgah, a Joshua who leads the host, or one of those sweet and patient souls who in narrow circles live radiant lives, there seems, if mind and character here developed can go no further, a purposelessness inconsistent with what we can see of the linked sequence of the universe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 3 weeks ago
A philosophy without heart and a...

A philosophy without heart and a faith without intellect are abstractions from the true life of knowledge and faith. The man whom philosophy leaves cold, and the man whom real faith does not illuminate, may be assured that the fault lies in them, not in knowledge and faith. The former is still an alien to philosophy, the latter an alien to faith.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 3 weeks ago
The only government that I recognize-and...

The only government that I recognize-and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army - is that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
1 month 1 week ago
As the French say, there are...

As the French say, there are three sexes - men, women, and clergymen.

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Vol. I, ch. 9, p. 313
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 4 weeks ago
But let us not forget this...
But let us not forget this either: it is enough to create new names and estimations and probabilities in order to create in the long run new "things."
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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 3 weeks ago
Communism differs from all previous movements...

Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals. Its organisation is, therefore, essentially economic, the material production of the conditions of this unity; it turns existing conditions into conditions of unity. The reality, which communism is creating, is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals, insofar as reality is only a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals themselves.

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Vol. I, Part 4.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
One must care about a world...

One must care about a world one will not see.

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Attributed to Russell in The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations (1997), p. 450, and in Robertson's Dictionary of Quotations (1998), p. 362, but no specific source is given.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
I have never taken myself for...

I have never taken myself for a being. A non-citizen, a marginal type, a nothing who exists only by the excess, by the superabundance of his nothingness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 1 week ago
After the battle in Pharsalia, when...

After the battle in Pharsalia, when Pompey was fled, one Nonius said they had seven eagles left still, and advised to try what they would do. "Your advice," said Cicero, "were good if we were to fight jackdaws."

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Cicero
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 5 days ago
Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction,...

Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation.

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Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (ca. 1603), in Works, Vol. 1, p. 83; The Works of Francis Bacon (1819), Vol. 2, p. 133
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 5 days ago
...it is the peculiar and perpetual...

...it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives...

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Aphorism 46
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
Life inspires more dread than death...

Life inspires more dread than death - it is life which is the great unknown.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
However intimate we may be with...

However intimate we may be with the operations of the mind, we cannot think more than two or three minutes a day; - unless, by taste or by profession, we practice, for hours on end, brutalizing words in order to extract ideas from them. The intellectual represents the major disgrace, the culminating failure of Homo sapiens.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
3 months 1 week ago
It must be recognized that man...

It must be recognized that man in his limited and relative earthly life is capable of bringing about the beautiful and the valuable only when he believes in another life, unlimited, absolute, eternal. That is a law of his being. A contact with this mortal life exclusive of any other ends in the wearing-away of effective energy and a self-satisfaction that makes one useless and superficial. Only the spiritual man, striking his roots deep in infinite and eternal life, can be a true creator. But Humanism denied the spiritual man, handed over the eternal to the temporal, and took its stand by the natural man within the limited confines of the earth.

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p. 34
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 weeks ago
If we are going to be...

If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things - praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts - not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They might break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 4 weeks ago
It would be too ridiculous to...

It would be too ridiculous to go about seriously to prove that wealth does not consist in money, or in gold and silver; but in what money purchases, and is valuable only for purchasing. Money no doubt, makes always a part of the national capital; but it has already been shown that it generally makes but a small part, and always the most unprofitable part of it.

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Chapter I, p. 470.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 weeks ago
Examine the man who lives in...

Examine the man who lives in misery because he does not shine above other men; who goes about producing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and claims; struggling to force everybody, as it were begging everybody for God's sake, to acknowledge him a great man, and set him over the heads of men! Such a creature is among the wretchedest sights seen under this sun. A great man? A poor morbid prurient empty man; fitter for the ward of a hospital, than for a throne among men. I advise you to keep out of his way. He cannot walk on quiet paths; unless you will look at him, wonder at him, write paragraphs about him, he cannot live. It is the emptiness of the man, not his greatness. Because there is nothing in himself, he hungers and thirsts that you would find something in him. In good truth, I believe no great man, not so much as a genuine man who had health and real substance in him of whatever magnitude, was ever much tormented in this way.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 4 days ago
Too many of our preferences reflect...

Too many of our preferences reflect nasty behaviours and states of mind that were genetically adaptive in the ancestral environment. Instead, wouldn't it be better if we rewrote our own corrupt code?

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The Abolitionist Project, Talks given at the FHI (Oxford University) and the Charity International Happiness Conference, 2007
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 3 weeks ago
It had been, when I read...

It had been, when I read it, only a vaguely pregnant piece of nonsense. Now it was all as clear as day, as evident as Euclid. Of course the Dharma-Body of the Buddha was the hedge at the bottom of the garden. At the same time, and no less obviously, it was these flowers, it was anything that I-or rather the blessed Not-I, released for a moment from my throttling embrace-cared to look at.

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describing his experiment with mescaline, pp. 18-19
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
2 months 2 weeks ago
Orwell's essay speaks to us today....

Orwell's essay speaks to us today. It tells us that patriotism is the sine qua non of survival, and that it arises spontaneously in the ordinary human heart. It does not depend upon any grand narrative of triumph of the kind put about by the fascists and the communists, but grows from the habits of association that we British have been fortunate enough to inherit. We do not use grand and tainted honorifics like "la patrie" or "das Vaterland". We refer simply to this spot of earth, which belongs to us because we belong to it, have lived in it, loved it, defended it and established peace and prosperity within its borders.

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'Brexit will give us back pride in our island roots', The Times (18 November 2017), p. 35
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 3 weeks ago
We get into the habit of...

We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
Endless brooding over a question undermines...

Endless brooding over a question undermines you as much as a dull pain.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
3 weeks 5 days ago
The essence of our God is...

The essence of our God is obscure. It ripens continuously; perhaps victory is strenghened with our every valorous deed, but perhaps even all these agonizing struggles toward deliverance and victory are inferior to the nature of divinity. Whatever it might be, we fight on without certainty, and our virtue, uncertain of any rewards, acquires a profound nobility.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 3 weeks ago
Try not to have Emily exposed...

Try not to have Emily exposed to hours and hours of TV. It is a vile drug which permeates the nervous system, especially in the young.

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Letter to son Eric McLuhan, regarding one of Eric's daughters, 1976
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
It makes no sense to say...

It makes no sense to say that death is the goal of life, but what else is there to say?

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
Skepticism is the sadism of embittered...

Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 1 week ago
One simple method is to take...

One simple method is to take a pen or pencil and hold it up against a blank wall or ceiling. Now concentrate on the pen as if it is the most important thing in the world. Then allow your sense to relax, so you see the pen against the background of the wall. Concentrate again. Relax again. Keep on doing this until you become aware of the ability to focus attention at will. You will find that this unaccustomed activity of the will is tiring; it produces a sense of strain behind the eyes. My own perception is that if you persist, in spite of the strain, the result is acute discomfort, followed by a sudden immense relief - the 'peak experience'.

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p. 33
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 4 weeks ago
When the man governed by self-interest,...

When the man governed by self-interest, the god of this world, does not renounce it but merely refines it by the use of reason and extends it beyond the constricting boundary of the present, he is represented (Luke XVI, 3-9) as one who, in his very person [as servant], defrauds his master [self- interest] and wins from him sacrifices in behalf of "duty."

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Book IV, Part 1, Section 2, "The Christian religion as a natural religion"
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
5 months 3 weeks ago
You want to know whether I...

You want to know whether I can make a long speech, such as you are in the habit of hearing; but that is not my way. Socrates speaking to Alcibiades

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 weeks ago
Not only was Thebes built by...

Not only was Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but without the music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man glories-in ever done.

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Bk. III, ch. 8.
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 4 weeks ago
To require that a so-called layman...

To require that a so-called layman should not use his own reason in religious matters, particularly since religion is to be appreciated as moral, but instead follow the appointed clergyman and thus someone else's reason, is an unjust demand because as to morals every man must account for all his doings. The clergyman will not and even cannot assume such a responsibility.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), pages 94-95
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 4 weeks ago
The directors of such [joint-stock] companies,...

The directors of such [joint-stock] companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own.... Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company.

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Chapter I, Part III, Article I, orig.p. 233.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
3 months 3 weeks ago
The power of thought is the...

The power of thought is the light of knowledge, the power of will is the energy of character, the power of heart is love. Reason, love and power of will are perfections of man.

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Introduction, Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 99
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 4 days ago
No government ought to be without...

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

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Letter to George Washington (9 September 1792) The word "censor" in this context means one who censures or an adverse critic not an official who decides what can be published.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 2 weeks ago
Operational analysis ... cannot raise the...

Operational analysis ... cannot raise the decisive question whether the consent itself was not the work of manipulation-a question for which the actual state of affairs provides ample justification. The analysis cannot raise it because it would transcend its terms toward transitive meaning-toward a concept of democracy which would reveal the democratic election as a rather limited democratic process. Precisely such a non-operational concept is the one rejected by the authors as "unrealistic" because it defines democracy on too articulate a level as the clear-cut control of representation by the electorate-popular control as popular sovereignty.

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p. 116
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
Buddhism calls anger "corruption of the...

Buddhism calls anger "corruption of the mind," Manicheism "root of the tree of death." I know this, but what good does it do me to know?

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
I am sitting with a...

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again "I know that that's a tree", pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell them: "This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy."

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 1 week ago
May we not imagine that possibly...

May we not imagine that possibly this earthly life of ours is to the other life what sleeping is to waking? May not all our life be a dream and death an awakening? But an awakening to what? And supposing that everything is but the dream of God and that God one day will awaken? Will He remember His dream?

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 3 weeks ago
The original thinking force of the...

The original thinking force of the universe progresses and develops itself in all possible determinations of which it is capable, just as the other original natural forces progress and assume all possible configurations. I am a particular determination of the formative force, like the plant; a particular determination of the peculiar motive force, like the animal; and in addition to this a determination of the thinking force: and the union of these three basic forces into one force, into one harmonious development, is the distinguishing characteristic of my species.

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P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 12
Philosophical Maxims
William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford
3 weeks 4 days ago
Inquiry into the evidence of a...

Inquiry into the evidence of a doctrine is not to be made once for all, and then taken as finally settled. It is never lawful to stifle a doubt; for either it can be honestly answered by means of the inquiry already made, or else it proves that the inquiry was not complete. "But," says one, "I am a busy man; I have no time for the long course of study which would be necessary to make me in any degree a competent judge of certain questions, or even able to understand the nature of the arguments." Then he should have no time to believe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 4 days ago
The mother principle [is] that 'governments...

The mother principle is that 'governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
1 month 4 days ago
Warrior spirit is characterised by direct,...

Warrior spirit is characterised by direct, clear and loyal relations, based on fidelity and honour and a sound instinct for the various dignities, which it can well distinguish: it opposes everything which is impersonal and trivial.

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p. 117
Philosophical Maxims
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