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Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
4 months 3 weeks ago
Critical social science attempts to determine...

Critical social science attempts to determine when theoretical statements grasp invariant regularities of social action as such and when they express ideologically frozen relations of dependence that can in principle be transformed.

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p. 310 as cited in: Dominick LaCapra (1983) Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language. p. 170
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 2 weeks ago
The mediaeval university looked backwards: it...

The mediaeval university looked backwards: it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge... The modern university looks forward: it is a factory of new knowledge.

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Letter to E. Ray Lankester (11 April 1892) Huxley Papers, Imperial College: 30.448
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 weeks ago
All greatness is unconscious, or it...

All greatness is unconscious, or it is little and naught.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 3 weeks ago
What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom...

What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers?

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17:25 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 1 day ago
Freedom is the alone unoriginated birthright...

Freedom is the alone unoriginated birthright of man, and belongs to him by force of his humanity; and is independence on the will and co-action of every other in so far as this consists with every other person's freedom.

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Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Ethics by Immanuel Kant, trans. J.W. Semple, ed. with Iintroduction by Rev. Henry Calderwood (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1886) (3rd edition). Chapter: GENERAL DIVISION OF JURISPRUDENCE.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 6 days ago
He who is not sure of...

He who is not sure of his memory, should not undertake the trade of lying. 

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Book I, Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
1 month 1 week ago
A very weighty argument is this...

A very weighty argument is this - namely, that neither does the light which descends from thence, chiefly upon the world, mix itself with anything, nor admit of dirtiness or pollution, but remains entirely, and in all things that are, free from defilement, admixture, and suffering. Besides, we must pay attention to the other kinds of phenomena, both to the Intelligible, and yet more to the Sensible - whatever are connected with matter, or will manifest themselves in relation to our subject.

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Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
4 weeks ago
The Catastrophist constructs theories, the Uniformitarian...

The Catastrophist constructs theories, the Uniformitarian Demolishes them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 3 weeks ago
Non-literate societies cannot see films or...

Non-literate societies cannot see films or photos without much training.

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(p. 41)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 3 weeks ago
Now I am about to take...

Now I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.

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Last words
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 2 days ago
No society can surely be flourishing...

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.

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Chapter VIII, p. 94.
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
4 months 2 weeks ago
Neither art nor wisdom may be...

Neither art nor wisdom may be attained without learning.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 3 weeks ago
Absurd, irreducible; nothing - not even...

Absurd, irreducible; nothing - not even a profound and secret delirium of nature - could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it. Reflections on a chestnut tree root.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 weeks ago
Men do reverence men. Men do...

Men do reverence men. Men do worship in that 'one temple of the world,' as Novalis calls it, the Presence of a Man! Hero-worship, true and blessed, or else mistaken, false and accursed, goes on everywhere and everywhen. In this world there is one godlike thing, the essence of all that was or ever will be of godlike in this world: the veneration done to Human Worth by the hearts of men. Hero-worship, in the souls of the heroic, of the clear and wise,-it is the perpetual presence of Heaven in our poor Earth: when it is not there, Heaven is veiled from us; and all is under Heaven's ban and interdict, and there is no worship, or worthship, or worth or blessedness in the Earth any more!-

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 4 weeks ago
The directing motive, the end and...

The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus value, and consequently to exploit labor-power to the greatest possible extent.

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Vol. I, Ch. 13, pg. 363.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 3 weeks ago
Mysticism is just tomorrow's science dreamed...

Mysticism is just tomorrow's science dreamed today.

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Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
5 months 6 days ago
In my opinion…

In my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically.

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Sources: Correspondence with Mersenne note for line 7 (1640), page 36, Die Wiener Zeit page 532 (2008); StackExchange Math Q/A Where did Descartes write...
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 4 weeks ago
England has to fulfill a double...

England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating - the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying the material foundations of Western society in Asia... When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch... and subjected them to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will human progress cease to resemble that hideous, pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain.

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"The Future Results of British Rule in India," New York Daily Tribune, 08 August 1853
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
1 month 2 weeks ago
Philosophy accepts the hard and hazardous...

Philosophy accepts the hard and hazardous task of dealing with problems not yet open to the methods of science - problems like good and evil, beauty and ugliness, order and freedom, life and death; so soon as a field of inquiry yields knowledge susceptible of exact formulation it is called science. Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 2 weeks ago
It has often been said that...

It has often been said that every man who has suffered misfortunes prefers to be himself, even with his misfortunes, rather than to be someone else without them. For unfortunate men, when they preserve their normality in their misfortune - that is to say, when they endeavor to persist in their own being - prefer misfortune to non-existence. For myself I can say that when a as a youth, and even as a child, I remained unmoved when shown the most moving pictures of hell, for even then nothing appeared to me quite so horrible as nothingness itself. It was a furious hunger of being that possessed me, an appetite for divinity, as one of our ascetics [San Juan de los Angeles] has put it.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months 3 weeks ago
Intuitionism is not constructive, perfectionism is...

Intuitionism is not constructive, perfectionism is unacceptable.

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Chapter I, Section 9, pg. 52
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
1 month 3 weeks ago
So today... red and blue voters...

So today... red and blue voters rely on a completely different set of facts. ...Polls ...suggest that a substantial... majority of Republican voters believe that the Democrats... stole the election, and that Joe Biden is not the legitimate president... When you don't have a common factual basis, you... reinforce the kinds of filter bubbles that people have started to move into.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 6 days ago
There is nothing so easy, so...

There is nothing so easy, so sweet, and so favourable, as the divine law: it calls and invites us to her, guilty and abominable as we are; extends her arms and receives us into her bosom, foul and polluted as we at present are, and are for the future to be. But then, in return, we are to look upon her with a respectful eye; we are to receive this pardon with all gratitude and submission, and for that instant at least, wherein we address ourselves to her, to have the soul sensible of the ills we have committed, and at enmity with those passions that seduced us to offend her.

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Ch. 56, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
I cannot get from the nature...

I cannot get from the nature of the proposition to the individual logical operations!!! That is, I cannot bring out how far the proposition is the picture of the situation. I am almost inclined to give up all my efforts.

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Journal entries (12 March 1915 and 15 March 1915) p. 41
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 3 weeks 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
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks 4 days ago
To her who gives and takes...

To her who gives and takes back all, to nature, the man who is instructed and modest says, Give what thou wilt; take back what thou wilt. And he says this not proudly, but obediently and well pleased with her.

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X, 14
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 1 day ago
To his dog....
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Main Content / General
William James
William James
4 months 4 weeks ago
The "through-and-through" universe seems to suffocate...

The "through-and-through" universe seems to suffocate me with its infallible impeccable all-pervasiveness. Its necessity, with no possibilities; its relations, with no subjects, make me feel as if I had entered into a contract with no reserved rights ... It seems too buttoned-up and white-chokered and clean-shaven a thing to speak for the vast slow-breathing unconscious Kosmos with its dread abysses and its unknown tides.

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Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912), Ch. 12 : Absolutism and Empiricism
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 4 weeks ago
To those who inquire as to...

To those who inquire as to the purpose of mathematics, the usual answer will be that it facilitates the making of machines, the travelling from place to place, and the victory over foreign nations, whether in war or commerce. ... The reasoning faculty itself is generally conceived, by those who urge its cultivation, as merely a means for the avoidance of pitfalls and a help in the discovery of rules for the guidance of practical life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry George
Henry George
3 weeks 6 days ago
It is as to whether its...

It is as to whether its services or uses are to be exchanged or not which makes a tool an article of capital or merely an article of wealth. Thus, the lathe of a manufacturer used in making things which are to be exchanged is capital, while the lathe kept by a gentleman for his own amusement is not.

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Book I, Ch. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
5 months 1 week ago
Therefore death is nothing…

Therefore death is nothing to us, it matters not one jot, since the nature of the mind is understood to be mortal.

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Book III, lines 830-831 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
4 months 2 weeks ago
The fact that no one has...

The fact that no one has come up with a really convincing reason for giving greater moral weight to members of our own species, simply because they are members of our species, strongly suggests that there is no such reason. Like racism and sexism, speciesism is wrong.

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p. 343
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 1 day ago
He who humbleth himself wants to...
He who humbleth himself wants to be exalted.
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Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 2 weeks ago
There were two brothers called Both...

There were two brothers called Both and Either; perceiving Either was a good, understanding, busy fellow, and Both a silly fellow and good for little, Philip said, "Either is both, and Both is neither."

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35 Philip
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 3 weeks ago
The literate man is a sucker...

The literate man is a sucker for propaganda...You cannot propagandize a native. You can sell him rum and trinkets, but you cannot sell him ideas.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months 3 weeks ago
We may suppose that everyone has...

We may suppose that everyone has in himself the whole form of a moral conception.

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Chapter I, Section 9, pg. 50
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 months 5 days ago
If our universe is one of...

If our universe is one of many, unlike others in containing observers like ourselves, there is no need to posit a designer. Most universes will be too chaotic to allow the emergence of life or mind. In that case, the fact that humans exist in this universe needs no special explanation.

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Sweet Morality (p. 222)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
Refinement is a sign of a...

Refinement is a sign of a deficient vitality, in art, in love, and in everything.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
Frazer is much more savage than...

Frazer is much more savage than most of his savages, for they are not as far removed from the understanding of spiritual matter as a twentieth-century Englishman. His explanations of primitive practices are much cruder than the meaning of these practices themselves.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 131
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 4 weeks ago
There are many kinds of gods....

There are many kinds of gods. Therefore there are many kinds of men.

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"One and Many," p. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 1 week ago
A farewell does not dilute the...

A farewell does not dilute the presence of the past; it may make an even deeper presence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
4 months 2 weeks ago
Into the middle things…

Into the middle things.

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Line 148
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 4 weeks ago
I have always thought respectable people...

I have always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel.

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Quoted in Alan Wood Bertrand Russell: The Passionate Skeptic: A Biography, Vol. 2 (1958), p. 233
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 weeks ago
Savage - There is only one...

Savage - There is only one way fit for a man - Heroism, or Master-Morality, or Violence. All the other people in between are ploughing the sand.

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Pilgrim's Regress 100
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
3 weeks 5 days ago
The greatest of errors therefore would...

The greatest of errors therefore would be to believe what the modern sect, which has only worked to obscure all truths, never ceases to advance, which is that what cannot be defined is not known, while on the contrary what is of the essence of what is perfectly known cannot be defined; for the more a thing is known, the more it brings us to intuition, which excludes all equation.

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p. 70
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 4 weeks ago
Have no mean hours, but be...

Have no mean hours, but be grateful for every hour, and accept what it brings. The reality will make any sincere record respectable. No day will have been wholly misspent, if one sincere, thoughtful page has been written. Let the daily tide leave some deposit on these pages, as it leaves sand and shells on the shore. So much increase of terra firma. this may be a calendar of the ebbs and flows of the soul; and on these sheets as a beach, the waves may cast up pearls and seaweed.

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July 6, 1840
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 3 weeks ago
No one should be judge in...

No one should be judge in his own cause.

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Maxim 545
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 1 day ago
He who thinks a great deal...
He who thinks a great deal is not suited to be a party man: he thinks his way through the party and out the other side too soon.
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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 6 days ago
We are born to inquire after...

We are born to inquire after truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.

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Book III, Ch. 8. Of the Art of Conversation
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 3 weeks ago
When we read the best nineteenth-...

When we read the best nineteenth- and twentieth-century novelists, we soon realize that they are trying in a variety of ways to establish a definition of human nature, to justify the continuation of life as well as the writing of novels.

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"The Sealed Treasure" (1960), p. 60
Philosophical Maxims
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