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Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 1 week ago
I have needed God every day...

I have needed God every day to defend myself against the abundance of thoughts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 1 week ago
A reproach can only hurt if...

A reproach can only hurt if it hits the mark. Whoever knows that he does not deserve a reproach can treat it with contempt.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
5 days ago
Retire into thyself. The rational principle...

Retire into thyself. The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquility.

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VII, 28
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
4 months 3 days ago
The task of universal pragmatics is...

The task of universal pragmatics is to identify and reconstruct universal conditions of possible mutual understanding.

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p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
It is the same: a chosen...

It is the same: a chosen one is a man whom God's finger crushes against the wall.

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Act 2, sc. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
1 month 1 week ago
From each as they choose, to...

From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen.

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Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, Patterning, p. 160
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 2 weeks ago
Sir Henry Wotton used to say...

Sir Henry Wotton used to say that critics are like brushers of noblemen's clothes.

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No. 64
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 1 day ago
Verily I say unto you, All...

Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.

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(Mark 3:28-29) (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 1 week ago
An unexciting truth may be eclipsed...

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.

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Chapter 11 (p. 104)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 5 days ago
If I used to ask myself,...

If I used to ask myself, over a coffin, "what good did it do the occupant to be born?" I now put the same question about anyone alive.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 5 days 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
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
3 months 4 weeks ago
Bats ... present a range of...

Bats ... present a range of activity and a sensory apparatus so different from ours that the problem I want to pose is exceptionally vivid (though it certainly could be raised with other species). Even without the benefit of philosophical reflection, anyone who has spent some time in an enclosed space with an excited bat knows what it is to encounter a fundamentally alien form of life.

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p. 168.
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
5 days ago
Let no act be done at...

Let no act be done at haphazard, nor otherwise than according to the finished rules that govern its kind.

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IV, 2
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is not your strength and...

It is not your strength and your natural power that subjects all these people to you. Do not pretend then to rule them by force or to treat them with harshness. Satisfy their reasonable desires; alleviate their necessities; let your pleasure consist in being beneficent; advance them as much as you can, and you will act like the true king of desire.

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 3 weeks ago
The best books are those, which...

The best books are those, which those who read them believe they themselves could have written.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georges Sorel
Georges Sorel
2 weeks 5 days ago
Lenin may be proud of what...

Lenin may be proud of what his comrades are doing; the Russian workers are acquiring immortal glory in attempting the realization of what hitherto had been only an abstract idea.....

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"For Lenin," Soviet Russia, Official Organ of The Russian Soviet Government Bureau, Vol. II, New York: NY, January-June 1920 (April 10, 1920), p. 356
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 1 week ago
In the course of evolution nature...

In the course of evolution nature has gone to endless trouble to see that every individual is unlike every other individual.... Physically and mentally, each one of us is unique. Any culture which, in the interests of efficiency or in the name of some political or religious dogma, seeks to standardize the human individual, commits an outrage against man's biological nature.

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Chapter 3 (p. 21)
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 1 week ago
A person might fairly doubt also...

A person might fairly doubt also what in the world they mean by the absolute - this that or the other, since, as they would themselves allow, the account of the humanity is one and the same in the absolute man, and in any individual man: for so far as the individual and the absolute man are both man, they will not differ at all: and if so, then the essential good and any particular good will not differ, in so far as both are good. Nor will it do to say that the eternity of the absolute good makes it to be more good; for a white thing which has lasted white ever so long, is no whiter than that which only lasts for a day.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 1 week ago
Idea or Vision, in its sensuous...

Idea or Vision, in its sensuous meaning, would be something that could be perceived only by the bodily eye and not by any other sense such as taste, hearing, etc.; it would be such a thing as a rainbow, or the forms which pass before us in dreams. Idea or Vision, in its supersensuous meaning, would denote, first of all, in conformity with the sphere in which the word is to be valid, something that cannot be perceived by the body at all, but only by the mind; and then, something that cannot, as many other things can, be perceived by the dim feeling of the mind, but only by the eye of the mind, by clear perception.

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The Chief Difference Between The Germans And The Other Peoples Of Teutonic Descent p. 59
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 1 week ago
A wise man's kingdom is his...

A wise man's kingdom is his own breast: or, if he ever looks farther, it will only be to the judgment of a select few, who are free from prejudices, and capable of examining his work. Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude; and Phocion, you know, always suspected himself of some blunder when he was attended with the applauses of the populace.

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Playfully ironic letter to Adam Smith regarding the positive reception of "The Theory of Moral Sentiments"
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
3 weeks 3 days ago
All rational action is economic. All...

All rational action is economic. All economic activity is rational action. All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.

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Part II : The Economics of a Socialist Community, § I : The Economics of an Isolated Socialist Community, Ch. 5 : The Nature of Economic Activity, p. 97
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
4 months 1 week ago
When we reflect on the long...

When we reflect on the long and dense night in which France and all Europe have remained plunged by their governments and their priests, we must feel less surprise than grief at the bewilderment caused by the first burst of light that dispels the darkness.

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Author's Inscription: French Edition
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 1 week ago
As the past has ceased to...

As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity. Variant translation: When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.

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Book Four, Chapter VIII
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
What is new in our time...

What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.

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Quoted on Who Said That?, BBC TV, 8/8/1958
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 5 days ago
Life is too full of death...

Life is too full of death for death to be able to add anything to it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
This inner revolution is realistic because...

This inner revolution is realistic because it maintains itself deliberately within the framework of existing institutions; the oppressed reckon with the real situation.

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p. 66
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
1 month 1 day ago
If the gist of the controversy...

If the gist of the controversy were to be expressed in a single sentence, one might say that the mechanists represented the opposition of the natural sciences to philosophic interference, while the dialecticians stood for the supremacy of philosophy over the sciences and thus reflected the characteristic tendency of Soviet ideological development. The mechanists' outlook might be called negative, while the dialecticians ascribed immense importance to philosophy and regarded themselves as specialists. The mechanists, however, had a much better idea of what science was about. The dialecticians were ignoramuses in this sphere and confined themselves to general formulas about the philosophical need to "generalize" and unify the sciences; on the other hand, they knew more than the mechanists about the history of philosophy. (Eventually the party condemned both camps, and created a dialectical synthesis of both forms of ignorance.)

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(pg. 64)
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 weeks 2 days ago
Why then do you occupy me...

Why then do you occupy me with the words rather than with the works of wisdom? Make me braver, make me calmer, make me the equal of Fortune, make me her superior.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 weeks 2 days ago
Don't ask for what….

Don't ask for what you'll wish you hadn't got.

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Line 1 Seneca himself states that he is quoting a 'common saying' here.
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 3 weeks ago
Power is more 'spacious' than violence....

Power is more 'spacious' than violence. And violence becomes power if it 'gives itself more time.' Looked at from this perspective, power rests on an excess of space and time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 1 week ago
Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind...

Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.

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Book II, ch. 4 (trans. Constance Garnett) The Elder Zossima, speaking to Mrs. Khoklakov
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months 6 days ago
Political Freedom without economic equality is...

Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

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The Red Association
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 1 week ago
No greater mistake can be made...

No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on what was written previously; and that every change means progress. Men who think and have correct judgment, and people who treat their subject earnestly, are all exceptions only. Vermin is the rule everywhere in the world: it is always at hand and busily engaged in trying to improve in its own way upon the mature deliberations of the thinkers.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
1 month 1 day ago
The way of learning is none...

The way of learning is none other than finding the lost mind.

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6A:11, as translated by Wing-tsit Chan in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (1963), p. 58
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
A trade begun with savage war,...

A trade begun with savage war, prosecuted with unheard of cruelty, continued during the mid passage with the most loathsome imprisonment, and ending in perpetual exile and unremitting slavery, was a trade so horrid in all its circumstances, that it was impossible a single argument could be adduced in its favour. On the score of prudence nothing could be said in defence of it, nor could it be justified by necessity, and no case of inhumanity could be justified, but upon necessity; but no such necessity could be made out strong enough to bear out such a traffick. It was the duty of that House, therefore, to put an end to it. If it were said, that the interest of individuals required that it should continue, that argument ought not to be listened to.

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Speech in the House of Commons against the slave trade (12 May 1789), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVIII (1816), columns 68-69
Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
5 days ago
It makes no sense to regard...

It makes no sense to regard the right of suffrage as a utopian product of fantasy, cut loose from social reality. And it is for this reason that it is not a serious instrument of the proletarian dictatorship. It is an anachronism, an anticipation of the juridical situation which is proper on the basis of an already completed socialist economy, but is not in the transition period of the proletarian dictatorship.

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Chapter Five, "The Question of Suffrage"
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 3 weeks ago
Bad times, hard times, this is...

Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.

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80:8
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 6 days ago
I am a pattern watcher.

I am a pattern watcher.

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(p. 311)
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 4 weeks ago
For joys fall….

For joys fall not to the rich alone, nor has he lived ill, who from birth to death has passed unknown.

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Book I, epistle xvii, line 9
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 5 days ago
Our whole past experience is continually...

Our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness. I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way.

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Vol. VII, par. 547
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 1 week ago
The man of principles has character....

The man of principles has character. Of him we know definitely what to expect. He does not act on the basis of his instinct, but on the basis of his will. Therefore, without being redundant one can classify characteristics according to a person's faculty of desire (what is practical), as a) his nature, or natural talent, b) his temperament, or disposition, and c) his general character, or mode of thinking.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 195
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
1 month 1 day ago
...shall we say that the difference...

...shall we say that the difference between a vegetarian and a cannibal is just a matter of taste?

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"The Idolatry of Politics", New Republic, 1986-June-16, page 31.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 2 weeks ago
A book which, above all others...

A book which, above all others in the world, should be forbidden, is a catalogue of forbidden books.

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) edited by Alan Lindsay Mackay, p. 153
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 5 days ago
Whenever a system of communication evolves,...

Whenever a system of communication evolves, there is always the danger that some will exploit the system for their own ends.

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Ch. 4. The Gene machine
Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
5 days ago
Plausible as the idea of the...

Plausible as the idea of the United States of Europe as a peace arrangement may seem to some at first glance, it has on closer examination not the least thing in common with the method of thought and the standpoint of social democracy . . . At the present stage of development of the world market and of world economy, the conception of Europe as an isolated economic unit is a sterile concoction of the brain. Europe no more forms a special unit within world economy than does Asia or America.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
I am sure that university life...

I am sure that university life would be better, both intellectually and morally, if most university students had temporary childless marriages. This would afford a solution to the sexual urge neither restless nor surreptitious, neither mercenary nor casual, and of such a nature that it need not take up time which ought to be given to work.

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"Sex in Education", p. 119-120
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 1 week ago
There is an inconvenience which attends...

There is an inconvenience which attends all abstruse reasoning. That it may silence, without convincing an antagonist, and requires the same intense study to make us sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and 'tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attain'd with difficulty.

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Part 1, Section 1
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
No one is so....
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Main Content / General
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 5 days ago
Your suffering like your fate is...

Your suffering like your fate is without motive. To suffer, truly to suffer, is to accept the invasion of ills without the excuse of causality, as a favor of demented nature, as a negative miracle...

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
I construct my memories with my...

I construct my memories with my present. I am lost, abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past: I cannot escape.

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Philosophical Maxims
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