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John Rawls
John Rawls
1 month 3 weeks ago
The difference principle, for example, requires...

The difference principle, for example, requires that the higher expectations of the more advantaged contribute to the prospects of the least advantaged.

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Chapter II, Section 16, pg. 95
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
2 months 1 week ago
In this life it is necessary...

In this life it is necessary that we be on our guard. To begin with we must be constantly aware of the fact that life here below is best described as being a type of continual warfare. This is a fact that Job, that undefeated soldier of vast experience, tells us so plainly. Yet in this matter the great majority of mankind is often deceived, for the world, like some deceitful magician, captivates their minds with seductive blandishments, and as a result most individuals behave as if there had been a cessation of hostilities.

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p.61
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 weeks 4 days ago
Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and...

Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things.

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Fragment No. 1; Variant: We seek the absolute everywhere and only ever find things.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 3 days ago
The feeling of being ten thousand...

The feeling of being ten thousand years behind, or ahead, of the others, of belonging to the beginnings or to the end of humanity...

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Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
6 months 3 days ago
The cynical subject

In the Critique of Cynical Reasoning, a great bestseller in Germany (Sloterdijk, 1983), Peter Sloterdijk puts forward the thesis that ideology's dominant mode of functioning is cynical which renders impossible - or, more precisely, vain - the classical critical-ideological procedure. The cynical subject is quite aware of the distance between the ideological mask and the social reality, but he none the less still insists upon the mask.

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Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
1 month 3 weeks ago
Harvard now, I think, suffers from...

Harvard now, I think, suffers from a kind of self-idolatry, that it needs to be critical of itself in order to grow. And again, if you can be in contact with the best of its past, then it's got a chance. But if it just remains well adjusted to the status quo, generating careerist and opportunist students rather than critically oriented students who have a heart and soul, concerned about suffering here and around the world - then Harvard has a chance. I'm not giving up on Harvard, but I am making my way to New York.

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Speaking in Too Radical for Harvard? Cornel West on Failed Fight for Tenure, Biden's First 50 Days & More, Democracy Now!
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 4 weeks ago
We do not count a man's...

We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.

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Old Age
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 5 days ago
Virtue refuses facility for her companion...

Virtue refuses facility for her companion ... the easy, gentle, and sloping path that guides the footsteps of a good natural disposition is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

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Ch. 11. Of Cruelty (tr. Donald M. Frame)
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 3 weeks ago
Every time you make a choice...

Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.

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Book III, Chapter 4, "Morality and Psychoanalysis"
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 4 weeks ago
Children must be under authority, and...

Children must be under authority, and are themselves aware that they must be, although they like to play a game of rebellion at times. The case of children is unique in the fact that those who have authority over them are sometimes fond of them. Where this is the case, the children do not resent the authority in general, even when they resist it on particular occasions. Education authorities, as opposed to teachers, have not this merit, and do in fact sacrifice the children to what they consider the good of the State by teaching them "patriotism," i.e., a willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

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Ch. 13: Freedom in Society
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 week 5 days ago
It is a profoundly erroneous truism,...

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle - they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.

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ch. 5.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 3 weeks ago
Man has to awaken to wonder...

Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.

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p. 5e
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
1 month 3 weeks ago
There's only one corner of the...

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 weeks 3 days ago
It is a woman's outstanding characteristic...

It is a woman's outstanding characteristic that she can do anything for the love of a man. But those women who can achieve something important for the love of a thing are most exceptional, because this does not really agree with their nature. Love for a thing is a man's prerogative. But since masculine and feminine elements are united in our human nature, a man can live in the feminine part of himself, I and a woman in her masculine part. None the less the feminine element in man is only something in the background, as is the masculine element in woman. If one lives out the opposite sex in oneself one is living in one's own background, and one's real individuality suffers. A man should live as a man and a woman as a woman.

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P. 243
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
Just now
If nonviolence is to make sense...

If nonviolence is to make sense as an ethical and political position, it cannot simply repress aggression or do away with its reality; rather, nonviolence emerges as a meaningful concept precisely when destruction is most likely or seems most certain.

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p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
Just now
Challenge, and not desire, lies at...

Challenge, and not desire, lies at the heart of seduction.

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(p. 57)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 4 weeks ago
England's genius filled all measure Of...

England's genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame.

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Solution, ll. 35-42
Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
2 weeks 5 days ago
Everything is what it is: liberty...

Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 4 weeks ago
Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor...

Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.

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Success
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 3 weeks ago
I sit astride life like a...

I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse's good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment.

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p. 36e
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 weeks 1 day ago
I feel that I have within...

I feel that I have within me a medieval soul, and I believe that the soul of my country is medieval, that it has perforce passed through the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Revolution - learning from them, yes, but without allowing them to touch the soul, preserving the spiritual inheritance which has come down from what are called the Dark Ages. And Quixotism is simply the most desperate phase of the struggle between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which was the offering of the Middle Ages.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 weeks 3 days ago
All nature abounds in proofs of...

All nature abounds in proofs of other influences than merely mechanical action, even in the physical world. They crowd in upon us at the rate of several every minute. And my observation of men has led me to this little generalization. Speaking only of men who really think for themselves and not of mere reporters, I have not found that it is the men whose lives are mostly passed within the four walls of a physical laboratory who are most inclined to be satisfied with a purely mechanical metaphysics. On the contrary, the more clearly they understand how physical forces work the more incredible it seems to them that such action should explain what happens out of doors. A larger proportion of materialists and agnostics is to be found among the thinking physiologists and other naturalists, and the largest proportion of all among those who derive their ideas of physical science from reading popular books.

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Lecture II : The Universal Categories, §3. Laws: Nominalism, CP 5.65
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
2 months 3 weeks ago
I shall assume that your silence...

I shall assume that your silence gives consent.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Natural justice is a symbol or...

Natural justice is a symbol or expression of usefulness, to prevent one person from harming or being harmed by another.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 weeks 6 days ago
The kingdom of heaven is like...

The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.

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13:31-32 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 1 week ago
No one has yet been found...

No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to compel himself to sweep away all theories and common notions, and to apply the understanding, thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of particulars. Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed.

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Aphorism 97
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 weeks 4 days ago
The modern state, in its essence...

The modern state, in its essence and objectives, is necessarily a military state, and a military state necessarily becomes an aggressive state. If it does not conquer others it will itself be conquered, for the simple reason that wherever force exists, it absolutely must be displayed or put into action. From this again it follows that the modern state must without fail be huge and powerful; that is the indispensable condition for its preservation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 week ago
We are obliged to regard many...

We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy - at least until we have become as clever as they are.

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D 97
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 weeks 6 days ago
Recognize what is in your sight,...

Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you. For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest.

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Philosophical Maxims
Zeno of Citium
Zeno of Citium
1 month 1 week ago
All the good are friends of...

All the good are friends of one another.

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As quoted in Stromata, v. 14. by Clement of Alexandria
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 4 weeks ago
There are, first of all, two...

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. The first kind have had thoughts or experiences which seem to them worth communicating, while the second kind need money and consequently write for money.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
2 months ago
Let me have none of your...

Let me have none of your Popish stuff! Get away with you, good morning.

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Last words (June 1809), as quoted in The Fortnightly, vol. 25; vol. 31, p. 398
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
2 weeks 5 days ago
Because rhythm is a universal scheme...

Because rhythm is a universal scheme of existence, underlying all realization of order in change, it pervades all the arts, literary, musical, plastic and architectural, as well as the dance. Since man succeeds only as he adapts his behavior to the order of nature, his achievements and victories, as they ensue upon resistance and struggle, become the matrix of all esthetic subject-matter; in some sense they constitute the common pattern of art, the ultimate conditions of form. Their cumulative orders of succession become without express intent the means by which man commemorates and celebrates the most intense and full moments of his experience. Underneath the rhythm of every art and every work of art there lies, as a substratum in the depths of the subconsciousness, the basic pattern of the relations of the live creature to his environment.

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p. 156
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is not how things are...

It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.

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(6.44) Variant translation: The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is. Original German: Nicht wie die Welt ist, ist das Mystische, sondern dass sie ist.
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 weeks 6 days ago
Get thee hence, Satan: for it...

Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

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4:10 (KJV) Said to Satan.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 3 days ago
Fear is the antidote to boredom:...

Fear is the antidote to boredom: the remedy must be stronger than the disease.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
2 months 2 weeks ago
A true friend will partake of...

A true friend will partake of the wants and sorrows of his friend, as if they were his own; if he be in want, he will relieve him; if he be in prison, he will visit him; if he be sick, he will come to him; nay-situations may occur, in which he would not scruple to die for him. It cannot then be doubted, that friendship is one of the most useful means of procuring a secure, tranquil, and happy life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 3 weeks ago
Nicias, do you think you can...

Nicias, do you think you can erase with good deeds the wrongs you committed against your mother? What good deed will ever reach her? Her soul is a scorching noon time, without a single breath of a breeze, nothing moves, nothing changes, nothing lives there; a great emaciated sun, an immobile sun eternally consumes her.

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King Aegistheus, Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 weeks 1 day ago
If consciousness is, as some inhuman...

If consciousness is, as some inhuman thinker has said, nothing more than a flash of light between two eternities of darkness, then there is nothing more execrable than existence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 4 weeks ago
What the age needs is not...

What the age needs is not a genius - it has had geniuses enough, but a martyr, who in order to teach men to obey would himself be obedient unto death. What the age needs is awakening. And therefore someday, not only my writings but my whole life, all the intriguing mystery of the machine will be studied and studied. I never forget how God helps me and it is therefore my last wish that everything may be to his honour.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
2 weeks ago
I see myself immersed in the...

I see myself immersed in the depths of human existence and standing in the face of the ineffable mystery of the world and of all that is. And in that situation, I am made poignantly and burningly aware that the world cannot be self-sufficient, that there is hidden in some still greater depth a mysterious, transcendent meaning. This meaning is called God. Men have not been able to find a loftier name, although they have abused it to the extent of making it almost unutterable. God can be denied only on the surface; but he cannot be denied where human experience reaches down beneath the surface of flat, vapid, commonplace existence.

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As translated in In Love with Eternity : Philosophical Essays and Fragments (2005) by Richard Schain, p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is a political axiom that...

It is a political axiom that power follows property.

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Chapter 12 (p. 113)
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
2 weeks 4 days ago
The world is not divine sport,...

The world is not divine sport, it is divine destiny. There is divine meaning in the life of the world, of man, of human persons, of you and of me. Creation happens to us, burns itself into us, recasts us in burning - we tremble and are faint, we submit. We take part in creation, meet the Creator, reach out to Him, helpers and companions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 3 days ago
Old age, after all, is merely...

Old age, after all, is merely the punishment for having lived.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 4 weeks ago
And now, at half-past ten o'clock,...

And now, at half-past ten o'clock, I hear the cockerels crow in Hubbard's barns, and morning is already anticipated. It is the feathered, wakeful thought in us that anticipates the following day.

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July 11, 1851
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 3 weeks ago
The Communist Party has one objective:...

The Communist Party has one objective: the creation of a socialist economy; and one means: the utilization of the class struggle.

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Hugo, Act 5, sc. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 4 weeks ago
Whoso walketh in solitude, And inhabiteth...

Whoso walketh in solitude, And inhabiteth the wood, Choosing light, wave, rock, and bird, Before the money-loving herd, Into that forester shall pass From these companions power and grace.

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Wood-notes, no. II, st. 4
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
Among the celestial...
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Main Content / General
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 weeks ago
...if the Catholick religion is destroyd...

...if the Catholick religion is destroyd by the Infidels, it is a most contemptible and absurd Idea, that, this, or any Protestant Church, can survive that Event. ... in Ireland particularly, the R[oman] C[atholic] Religion should be upheld in high respect and veneration. ... I am more serious on the positive encouragement to be given to this religion...because the serious and earnest belief and practice of it by its professors forms, as things stand, the most effectual Barrier, if not the sole Barrier, against Jacobinism.

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Letter to William Smith, Member of the Irish Parliament (29 January 1795), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.)
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months ago
It is difficult…

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

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Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (1767): Troisième Entretien
Philosophical Maxims
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