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Cisero
Cisero
3 months 1 week ago
Force overcome by force.

Force overcome by force.

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Pro Milone, Chapter XI, section 30 Variant translation: Violence conquered by violence.
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 1 week ago
The Outsider is always unhappy, but...

The Outsider is always unhappy, but he is an agent that ensures the happiness for millions of 'Insiders'.

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Chapter Seven, The Great Synthesis…
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 2 weeks ago
When Socrates and his two great...

When Socrates and his two great disciples composed a system of rational ethics they were hardly proposing practical legislation for mankind...They were merely writing an eloquent epitaph for their country.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 week ago
To fall into a habit is...

To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
3 weeks 2 days ago
Never promise more than you can...

Never promise more than you can perform.

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Maxim 528
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month ago
The desire to philosophize...
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Main Content / General
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
If the Russians still adhered to...

If the Russians still adhered to the Greek Orthodox religion, if they had instituted parliamentary government, and if they had a completely free press which daily vituperated us, then - provided they still had armed forces as powerful as they have now - we should still hate them if they gave us ground for thinking them hostile.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 3 weeks ago
As for me, I am mean:...

As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.

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Inès, describing her path to Hell, Act 1, sc. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
2 months 2 weeks ago
The blues is relevant today because...

The blues is relevant today because when we look down through the corridors of time, the black American interpretation of tragicomic hope in the face of dehumanizing hate and oppression will be seen as the only kind of hope that has any kind of maturity in a world of overwhelming barbarity and bestiality. That barbarity is found not just in the form of terrorism but in the form of the emptiness of our lives - in terms of the wasted human potential that we see around the world. In this sense, the blues is a great democratic contribution of black people to world history.

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(p20)
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 1 week ago
The history of the Romanovs is...

The history of the Romanovs is an Elizabethan tragedy that lasts for three centuries. Its keynote is cruelty, a barbaric, pointless kind of cruelty that has always been common in the East, but that came to Europe only recently, in the time of Hitler.

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pp. 61-62
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 2 weeks ago
Have no fear, little flock, for...

Have no fear, little flock, for your Father has approved of giving you the Kingdom.

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12:32
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
1 month 2 weeks ago
If I were asked to name...

If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.

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Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 3 weeks ago
The life-giving Spirit is the very...

The life-giving Spirit is the very one who slays you; the first thing the life-giving Spirit says is that you must enter into death, that you must die to, it is this way in order that you many not take Christianity in vain. A life-giving Spirit, that is the invitation; who would not willingly take hold of it! But die first, that is the halt!

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
...they who would make peace without...

...they who would make peace without a previous knowledge of the terms, make a surrender. They are conquered. They do not treat; they receive the law. Is this the disposition of the people of England? Then the people of England are contented to seek in the kindness of a foreign systematick enemy combined with a dangerous faction at home, a security which they cannot find in their own patriotism and their own courage. They are willing to trust to the sympathy of Regicides the guarantee of the British Monarchy. They are content to rest their religion on the piety of atheists by establishment. They are satisfied to seek in the clemency of practised murderers the security of their lives. They are pleased to confide their property to the safeguard of those who are robbers by inclination, interest, habit, and system. If this be our deliberate mind, truly we deserve to lose, what it is impossible we should long retain, the name of a nation.

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p. 48
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 3 weeks ago
Certain success evicts one from the...

Certain success evicts one from the paradise of winning against the odds.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
3 weeks ago
Our business in this world is...

Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits.

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Complete Works, vol. 26, Reflections and Remarks on Human Life, section 4.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks 4 days ago
There can be only one permanent...

There can be only one permanent revolution - a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.

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"Three Methods Of Reform" in Pamphlets : Translated from the Russian (1900) as translated by Aylmer Maude, p. 29
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first...

Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted to it; this world is no less so, since here we regret paradise or anticipate another one. What to do? Where to go? Do nothing and go nowhere, easy enough.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 4 weeks ago
In a word, human life is...

In a word, human life is more governed by fortune than by reason; is to be regarded more as a dull pastime than as a serious occupation; and is more influenced by particular humour, than by general principles. Shall we engage ourselves in it with passion and anxiety? It is not worthy of so much concern. Shall we be indifferent about what happens? We lose all the pleasure of the game by our phlegm and carelessness. While we are reasoning concerning life, life is gone; and death, though perhaps they receive him differently, yet treats alike the fool and the philosopher.

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Part I, Essay 18: The Sceptic
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 1 week ago
In its solitariness the spirit asks,...

In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe.

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Religion is world-loyalty. Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture II: "Religion and Dogma".
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
The question of "unreality," which confronts...

The question of "unreality," which confronts us at this point, is a very important one. Misled by grammar, the great majority of those logicians who have dealt with this question have dealt with it on mistaken lines. They have regarded grammatical form as a surer guide in analysis than, in fact, it is. And they have not known what differences in grammatical form are important.

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Ch. 16: Descriptions
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 3 weeks ago
A company of….

A company of solemn tyrants is impervious to all seductions.

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"Tyranny", 1764
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 3 weeks ago
Christ speaks of two debtors, one...

Christ speaks of two debtors, one of whom owed much and the other little, and who both found forgiveness. He asks: Which of these two ought to love more? The answer: The one who has forgiven much. When you love much, you are forgiven much-and when you are forgiven much, you love much. See here the blessed recurrence of salvation in love!

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 3 weeks ago
The experiences of this period had...

The experiences of this period had two very marked effects on my opinions and character. In the first place, they led me to adopt a theory of life, very unlike that on which I had before acted, and having much in common with what at that time I certainly had never heard of, the anti-self-consciousness theory of Carlyle.

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(pp. 141-142)
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
1 month 1 week ago
Jazz is the false liquidation of...

Jazz is the false liquidation of art - instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture.

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Perennial fashion - Jazz, as quoted in The Sociology of Rock (1978) by Simon Frith
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
When he entered into the Whig...

When he entered into the Whig party, he did not conceive that they pretended to any discoveries. They did not affect to be better Whigs, than those were who lived in the days in which principle was put to the test. Some of the Whigs of those days were then living. They were what the Whigs had been at the Revolution; what they had been during the reign of queen Anne; what they had been at the accession of the present royal family.

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p. 409
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
1 month 1 week ago
In organized groups such as the...

In organized groups such as the army or the Church there is either no mention of love whatsoever between the members, or it is expressed only in a sublimated and indirect way, through the mediation of some religious imagine in the love of whom the members unite and whose all-embracing love they are supposed to imitate in their attitude towards each other. ... It is one of the basic tenets of fascist leadership to keep primary libidinal energy on an unconscious level so as to divert its manifestations in a way suitable to political ends.

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"Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda," The Essential Frankfurt School Reader (1982), p. 123
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
1 month 3 weeks ago
Though I myself am an atheist,...

Though I myself am an atheist, I openly profess religion in the sense just mentioned, that is, a nature religion. I hate the idealism that wrenches man out of nature; I am not ashamed of my dependency on nature; I openly confess that the workings of nature affect not only my surface, my skin, my body, but also my core, my innermost being, that the air I breathe in bright weather has a salutary effect not only on my lungs but also on my mind, that the light of the sun illumines not only my eyes but also my spirit and my heart. And I do not, like a Christian, believe that such dependency is contrary to my true being or hope to be delivered from it. I know further that I am a finite moral being, that I shall one day cease to be. But I find this very natural and am therefore perfectly reconciled to the thought.

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Lecture V, R. Manheim, trans. (1967), pp. 35-36
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
1 month 3 days ago
In sum, a theory is only...

In sum, a theory is only accepted if the theory has substantial, non-ad hoc, explanatory successes. This is in accordance with Popper; unfortunately, it is in even better accordance with the 'inductivist' accounts that Popper rejects, since these stress support rather than falsification.

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The 'corroboration' of theories
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 1 week ago
Art is the imposing of a...

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment in recognition of the pattern.

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Ch. 29, June 10, 1943.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 3 days ago
Fame and tranquility can never be...

Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.

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Book I, Ch. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 3 weeks ago
For the moment, the jazz is...

For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad of tiny tremors. The notes know no rest, an inflexible order gives birth to them then destroys them, without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves.... I would like to hold them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stopping one, there would only remain in my hand a corrupt and languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even want that death: I know of few more bitter or intense impressions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
However hard they try, men cannot...

However hard they try, men cannot create a social organism, they can only create an organization. In the process of trying to create an organism they will merely create a totalitarian despotism.

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Chapter 3 (p. 24)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 3 days ago
Not because Socrates said so,... I...

Not because Socrates said so,... I look upon all men as my compatriots.

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Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 2 weeks ago
Ideas, aspirations, and objectives that, by...

Ideas, aspirations, and objectives that, by their content, transcend the established universe of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this universe.

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p. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
3 months 1 week ago
And yet it is hard…

And yet it is hard to believe that anything in nature could stand revealed as solid matter.The lightning of heaven goes through the walls of houses,like shouts and speech; iron glows white in fire; red-hot rocks are shattered by savage steam; hard gold is softened and melted down by heat; chilly brass, defeated by heat, turns liquid; heat seeps through silver, so does piercing cold;by custom raising the cup, we feel them bothas water is poured in, drop by drop, above.

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Book I, lines 487-496 (Frank O. Copley)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 weeks ago
Perhaps no person can be a...

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 2 weeks ago
You read the face of the...

You read the face of the sky and of the earth, but you have not recognized the one who is before you, and you do not know how to read this moment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
1 month 5 days ago
A leftist government doesn't exist because...

A leftist government doesn't exist because being on the left has nothing to do with governments.

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from L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze: G comme Gauche ("Gilles Deleuze's Alphabet Book: Left-wing Politics"), 1988-1989.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
I do not wish to force...

I do not wish to force my thoughts upon you, but I feel forced myself. Little as I know of Captain Brown, I would fain do my part to correct the tone and the statements of the newspapers, and of my countrymen generally, respecting his character and actions. It costs us nothing to be just. We can at least express our sympathy with, and admiration of, him and his companions, and that is what I now propose to do.

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Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 weeks 4 days ago
All human accomplishment has the same...

All human accomplishment has the same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!

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Henderson the Rain King (1959) [Viking/Penguin, 1984, ISBN 0-140-07269-1], ch. XVIII, p. 271
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
3 months 1 week ago
The first-beginnings…

The first-beginnings of things cannot be seen by the eyes.

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Book I, line 268 (tr. Munro)
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 weeks 4 days ago
One naturally regrets not being an...

One naturally regrets not being an expert or one of those insiders who thoroughly understand. It's hell to be an amateur. A little reflection calms your sorrow, however. The experts in their own little speedboat, the rest of us floating with the rest of mankind in a great barge - that is the picture.

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The Day They Signed the Treaty (1979), p. 224
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 3 weeks ago
I am convinced that everything has...

I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, - astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc.

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M. de Voltaire par M. Bailly et précédées de quelques lettres de M. de Voltaire a l'auteur, Paris 1777, quoted in E. F. Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture (2001), Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
1 month 2 weeks ago
Perhaps when distant people on other...

Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wave-length of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.

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The Message to the Planet (1989) p. 509.
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
2 months 3 weeks ago
The case of the conscience of...

The case of the conscience of Eichmann, which is admittedly complicated but is by no means unique, is scarcely comparable to the case of the German generals, one of whom, when asked at Nuremberg, "How was it possible that all of you honorable generals could continue to serve a murderer with such unquestioning loyalty?," replied that it was "not the task of a soldier to act as judge over his supreme commander. Let history do that or God in Heaven."

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Ch. VIII
Philosophical Maxims
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
3 months 1 week ago
Morality is the beauty…

Morality is the beauty of Philosophy.

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Trattato Terzo, Ch. 15.
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 2 weeks ago
Every thinker puts some portion of...

Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place.

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Ch. VI: Nature, Mind and the Subject
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
1 month 1 week ago
Nothing can well be imagined more...

Nothing can well be imagined more painful than the present position of woman, unless, on the one hand, she renounces all outward activity and keeps herself within the magic sphere, the bubble of her dreams; or, on the other, surrendering all aspiration, she gives herself to her real life, soul and body. For those to whom it is possible, the latter is best; for out of activity may come thought, out of mere aspiration can come nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 5 days ago
If this is philosophy it is...

If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.

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Philosophical Maxims
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