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C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 weeks ago
... in such a matter he...

... in such a matter he would never have been guided by his first thoughts (which would probably have been right) nor even by his twenty-first (which would have at least been explicable). Beyond doubt he would have prolonged deliberation till his hundred-and-first; and they would be infallibly and invincibly wrong. This is what always happens to the deliberations of a simple man who thinks he is a subtle one.

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Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
3 months 2 weeks ago
You rejoice in having made a...

You rejoice in having made a convert to Atheism. I think there is something unnatural in a zeal of proselytism in an Atheist. I do not believe in an intellectual God, a God made after the image of man. In the vulgar acceptation of the word, therefore, I think a man is right who does not believe in God, but I am also persuaded that a man is wrong who is without religion.

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Letter to H. B. Rosser (7 March 1820), quoted in C. Kegan Paul, William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, Vol. II (1876), p. 263
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 4 weeks ago
The French are ... the most...

The French are ... the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation of Europe, and the one that is surest to inspire admiration, hatred, terror, or pity, but never indifference.

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p. 245
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
The soul is subject to dollars....

The soul is subject to dollars.

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par. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 3 weeks ago
A whole from necessary substances is...

A whole from necessary substances is impossible. The whole, therefore, of substances is a whole of contingent things, and the world consists essentially of only contingent things.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
Neither a man nor a crowd...

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 3 weeks ago
If your little savage were left...

If your little savage were left to himself and be allowed to retain all his ignorance, he would in time join the infant's reasoning to the grown man's passion, he would strangle his father and sleep with his mother.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 3 weeks ago
...happiness is not an ideal of...

...happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination, resting solely on empirical grounds.

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Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics (1785), Second Section.
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 3 weeks ago
People of the same trade seldom...

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.

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Chapter X, Part II, p. 152.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 1 day ago
I have seen no more evident...

I have seen no more evident monstrosity and miracle in the world than myself.

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Ch. 11
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 2 weeks ago
Man is a substantial emigrant on...

Man is a substantial emigrant on a pilgrimage of being, and it is accordingly meaningless to set limits to what he is capable of being.

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"Man has no nature"
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 3 weeks ago
The good is the everlasting, the...

The good is the everlasting, the pinnacle of our life. ... life is striving towards the good, toward God. The good is the most basic idea ... an idea not definable by reason ... yet is the postulate from which all else follows. But the beautiful ... is just that which is pleasing. The idea of beauty is not an alignment to the good, but is its opposite, because for most part, the good aids in our victory over our predilections, while beauty is the motive of our predilections. The more we succumb to beauty, the further we are displaced from the good. ...the usual response is that there exists a moral and spiritual beauty ... we mean simply the good. Spiritual beauty or the good, generally not only does not coincide with the typical meaning of beauty, it is its opposite.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 3 weeks ago
Habit... makes the endurance of evil...

Habit... makes the endurance of evil easy (which, under the name of patience, is falsely honored as a virtue), because sensations of the same type, when continued without alteration for a long time, draw our attention away from the senses so that we are scarcely conscious of them at all. On the other hand, habit also makes the consciousness and the remembrance of good that has been received more difficult, which then gradually leads to ingratitude (a real vice). [...] Acquired habit deprives good actions of their moral value because it undermines mental freedom and, moreover, it leads to thoughtless repetitions of the same acts (monotony), and thus becomes ridiculous.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), pages 34-35
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 1 day ago
I have here only made a...

I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that ties them together.

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Book III, Ch. 12. Of Physiognomy
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
4 months 3 weeks ago
If we take a survey of...

If we take a survey of ages and of countries, we shall find the women, almost - without exception - at all times and in all places, adored and oppressed. Man, who has never neglected an opportunity of exerting his power, in paying homage to their beauty, has always availed himself of their weakness He has been at once their tyrant and their slave.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 6 days ago
Nature has had regard in everything...

Nature has had regard in everything no less to the end than to the beginning and the continuance, just like a man who throws up a ball. What good is it then for the ball to be thrown up, or harm for it to come down... what good is it to the bubble while it holds together, or what harm when it is burst?

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VIII, 20
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
5 months 1 week ago
Custom renders love…

Custom renders love attractive; for that which is struck by oft-repeated blows however lightly, yet after long course of time is overpowered and gives way. See you not too that drops of water falling on rocks after long course of time scoop a hole through these rocks?

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Book IV, lines 1283-1287 (tr. Munro)
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 3 weeks ago
There is nothing enduring, permanent, either...

There is nothing enduring, permanent, either in me or out of me, nothing but everlasting change. I know of no existence, not even of my own. I know nothing and am nothing. Images - pictures - only are, pictures which wander by without anything existing past which they wander, without any corresponding reality which they might represent, without significance and without aim. I myself am one of these images, or rather a confused image of these images. All reality is transformed into a strange dream, without a world of which the dream might be, or a mind that might dream it. Contemplation is a dream; thought, the source of all existence and of all that I fancied reality, of my own existence, my own capacities, is a dream of that dream.

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Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 60
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 1 week ago
If a person gave your body...

If a person gave your body to any stranger he met on his way, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in handing over your own mind to be confused and mystified by anyone who happens to verbally attack you?

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(28) [tr. Elizabeth Carter]
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
The universal view melts things into...

The universal view melts things into a blur.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
3 months 1 week ago
We live in a nightmare of...

We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality. If war should come, it will do so on account of our delusions, for which our hag-ridden conscience attempts to find moral excuses. To recover a sense of reality is to recover the truth about ourselves and the world in which we live, and thereby to gain the power of keeping this world from flying asunder.

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p. 80
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 1 week ago
The verdict of the world....

The verdict of the world is conclusive.

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III, 24
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 weeks ago
Enjoying things which are pleasant; that...

Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 1 week ago
No man has ever been so...

No man has ever been so far advanced by Fortune that she did not threaten him as greatly as she had previously indulged him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 3 weeks ago
Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both...

Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity.

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Chapter III, Part II, p. 534.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 3 weeks ago
All the higher, more penetrating ideals...

All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience.

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"The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life" in address to the Yale Philosophical Club, published in the International Journal of Ethics, April 1891
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
2 months 6 days ago
Those least responsible for climate change...

Those least responsible for climate change are worst affected by it.

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Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 month 4 days ago
Unbelievably, there is still here [in...

Unbelievably, there is still here [in Los Angeles] one of my most favorite places-the home of Henry and Ruth Denison at the very top of the hill, at the end of a road going nowhere, hanging above a reservoir-lake surrounded with pines. They have a sundeck under a eucalyptus tree where I have slept some memorably deep sleeps, and awakened very early in the morning, before sunrise, with stars still showing through the branches. In this house I have made some of my greatest friendships, so much so that I cannot think of it without that curious pleasure-pain which the Japanese call aware-the sense of echoes in the courtyards of the mind after the sun has left and the people have gone their ways forever.

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p. 224
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Verily, verily, I say unto you,...

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.

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6:53-56
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
5 months 3 weeks ago
The characters of self-restrained officials are...

The characters of self-restrained officials are exceedingly careful and just and conservative, but they lack keenness and a certain quick and active boldness. The courageous natures, on the other hand, are deficient in justice and caution in comparison with the former, but excel in boldness of action; and unless both these qualities are present it is impossible for a state to be entirely prosperous in public and private matters.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 6 days ago
Compared with the wholesale violence of...

Compared with the wholesale violence of capital and government, political acts of violence are but a drop in the ocean. That so few resist is the strongest proof how terrible must be the conflict between their souls and unbearable social iniquities.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 3 weeks ago
Once introduced discontinuity, once challenge any...

Once introduced discontinuity, once challenge any of the properties of visual space, and as they flow from each other, the whole conceptual framework collapses.

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p. 43
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 2 weeks ago
I am an American, Chicago born...

I am an American, Chicago born - Chicago, that somber city - and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.

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Ch. 1 (opening line)
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
3 months 2 weeks ago
Duty is that mode of action...

Duty is that mode of action which constitutes the best application of the capacity of the individual to the general advantage. Right is the claim of the individual to his share of the benefit arising from his neighbors' discharge of their several duties.

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"Summary of Principles". 1.5
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
5 months 2 days ago
We must learn how to imitate...

We must learn how to imitate Cicero from Cicero himself. Let us imitate him as he imitated others.

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in The Erasmus Reader (1990), p. 130.
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 3 weeks ago
One Folk, One Realm, One Leader....

One Folk, One Realm, One Leader. Union with the unity of an insect swarm. Knowledgeless understanding of nonsense and diabolism. And then the newsreel camera had cut back to the serried ranks, the swastikas, the brass bands, the yelling hypnotist on the rostrum. And here once again, in the glare of his inner light, was the brown insectlike column, marching endlessly to the tunes of this rococo horror-music. Onward Nazi soldiers, onward Christian soldiers, onward Marxists and Muslims, onward every chosen People, every Crusader and Holy War-maker. Onward into misery, into all wickedness, into death!

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
Standing on the bare ground, -...

Standing on the bare ground, - my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

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Nature
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 3 weeks ago
Lincoln is not the product of...

Lincoln is not the product of a popular revolution. This plebeian, who worked his way up from stone-breaker to Senator in Illinois, without intellectual brilliance, without a particularly outstanding character, without exceptional importance-an average person of good will, was placed at the top by the interplay of the forces of universal suffrage unaware of the great issues at stake. The new world has never achieved a greater triumph than by this demonstration that, given its political and social organisation, ordinary people of good will can accomplish feats which only heroes could accomplish in the old world!

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 days ago
What remains is....
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Main Content / General
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 6 days ago
Mark how fleeting and paltry is...

Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man - yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.

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IV, 48
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 3 weeks ago
Literacy remains even now the base...

Literacy remains even now the base and model of all programs of industrial mechanization; but, at the same time, locks the minds and senses of its users in the mechanical and fragmentary matrix that is so necessary to the maintenance of mechanized society.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 1 day ago
It is not without good reason...

It is not without good reason said, that he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying.

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Ch. 9. Of Liars, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 months ago
As Malaparte saw it, Naples was...

As Malaparte saw it, Naples was a pagan city with an ancient sense of time. Christianity taught those who were converted to it to think of history as the unfolding of a single plot - a moral drama of sin and redemption. In the ancient world there was no such plot - only a multitude of stories that were forever being repeated. Inhabiting that ancient world, the Neapolitans did not expect any fundamental alteration in human affairs. Not having accepted the Christian story of redemption, they had not been seduced by the myth of progress. Never having believed civilization to be permanent, they were not surprised when it foundered.

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An Old Chaos: Frozen Horses and Deserts of Brick (p. 22)
Philosophical Maxims
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl
1 month 3 days ago
Einstein's theory of relativity has advanced...

Einstein's theory of relativity has advanced our ideas of the structure of the cosmos a step further. It is as if a wall which separated us from Truth has collapsed. Wider expanses and greater depths are now exposed to the searching eye of knowledge, regions of which we had not even a presentiment. It has brought us much nearer to grasping the plan that underlies all physical happening.

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From the Author's Preface to First Edition
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
3 weeks 2 days ago
As soon as the generals and...

As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn't go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.

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"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" in Farming: A Hand Book
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
3 months 2 weeks ago
Imminent seems the collapse of that...

Imminent seems the collapse of that which for millennium has constituted man's universe. The new world which has arisen as an apparatus for supply of the necessaries of life compels everything and everyone to serve it. It annihilates whatever it has no place for person seems to be going undergoing absorption into that which is nothing more than a means to an end, into that which is devoid of purpose of significance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 weeks ago
O thou who art able to...

O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor; but of the true sort, namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim.

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Bk. II, ch. 8.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is the highest service to...

It is the highest service to submit the evil impulse to God through the power of love.

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p. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 3 weeks ago
Men use thought…

Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

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Dialogue 14, Le Chapon et la Poularde (1766); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed., 1919
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 6 days ago
Never let the future disturb you....

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

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VII, 8 (Penguin Classics edition of Meditations, translated by Maxwell Staniforth)
Philosophical Maxims
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