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Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 3 weeks ago
And hereby it comes to passe,...

And hereby it comes to passe, that Intemperance, is naturally punished with Diseases; Rashness, with Mischance; Injustice; with Violence of Enemies; Pride, with Ruine; Cowardice, with Oppression; Negligent government of Princes, with Rebellion; and Rebellion with Slaughter.

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The Second Part, Chapter 31, p. 194
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 4 days ago
In the Church which was founded...

In the Church which was founded at Corinth, St. Paul had special difficulties of the kind I have mentioned. In that flourishing commercial city, which through its shipping and situation, maintained a vital connexion between East and West, numerous crowds of people flocked together from all quarters, different in speech and in culture. As they mingled with the inhabitants, they produced, by contacts and contrasts, new and ever new differences. Even in the Church this differentiation endeavoured to make itself felt in sects and parties; and a kind of pagan wisdom made a special attempt to force itself forward as a teacher of truth. In his first letter to this church, from which the text I read is taken, St. Paul strongly combats this tendency.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 4 days ago
Granted that any practice causes more...

Granted that any practice causes more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral? And if, exactly in proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the slough of selfishness, they do not with one voice answer 'immoral,' let the morality of the principle of utility be for ever condemned.

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Dr. Whewell on Moral Philosophy (1852), in Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical, vol. 2, London: John W. Parker and son, 1859, p. 485
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 4 days ago
In this choice of inheritance we...

In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood, binding up the constitution of our country with our dearest domestic ties, adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections, keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflected charities our state, our hearths, our sepulchres, and our altars.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month ago
Never esteem anything as of advantage...

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.

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III, 7
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month ago
The universal nature has no external...

The universal nature has no external space; but the wondrous part of her art is that though she has circumscribed herself, everything which is within her which appears to decay and to grow old and to be useless she changes into herself, and again makes other new things from these very same, so that she requires neither substance from without nor wants a place into which she may cast that which decays. She is content then with her own space, and her own matter, and her own art.

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VIII, 50
Philosophical Maxims
Polybius
Polybius
1 month 3 weeks ago
We can get some idea of...

We can get some idea of a whole from a part, but never knowledge or exact opinion. Special histories therefore contribute very little to the knowledge of the whole and conviction of its truth. It is only indeed by study of the interconnexion of all the particulars, their resemblances and differences, that we are enabled at least to make a general survey, and thus derive both benefit and pleasure from history.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 day ago
Literacy affects the physiology as well...

Literacy affects the physiology as well as the psychic life of the African.

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(p. 38)
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 day ago
The newspaper is a corporate symbolist...

The newspaper is a corporate symbolist poem, environmental and invisible, as poem.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 day ago
There is no connection between the...

There is no connection between the elements in an electric world, which is equivalent to being surrounded by the human unconscious.

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(p. 260)
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 2 weeks ago
The notion of rights is linked...

The notion of rights is linked with the notion of sharing out, of exchange, of measured quantity. It has a commercial flavor, essentially evocative of legal claims and arguments. Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention; and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at.

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p. 61
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
1 month 3 weeks ago
Happiness is the free play of...

Happiness is the free play of the instincts, and so is youth.

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Ch. 2 : On Youth
Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
4 months ago
If now I...say "Stealing money is...

If now I...say "Stealing money is wrong," I produce a sentence which has no factual meaning - that is, expresses no proposition which can be either true or false. It is as if I had written "Stealing money!!" - where the shape and thickness of the exclamation marks show, by a suitable convention, that a special sort of moral disapproval is the feeling which is being expressed.

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p. 107.
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 5 days ago
An unbiased reader, on opening one...

An unbiased reader, on opening one of their [Fichte's, Schelling's or Hegel's] books and then asking himself whether this is the tone of a thinker wanting to instruct or that of a charlatan wanting to impress, cannot be five minutes in any doubt. ... The tone of calm investigation, which had characterized all previous philosophy, is exchanged for that of unshakeable certainty, such as is peculiar to charlatanry of every kind and at all times. ... From every page and every line, there speaks an endeavor to beguile and deceive the reader, first by producing an effect to dumbfound him, then by incomprehensible phrases and even sheer nonsense to stun and stupefy him, and again by audacity of assertion to puzzle him, in short, to throw dust in his eyes and mystify him as much as possible.

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E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 23
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 3 weeks ago
Is this not an advantage? Is...

Is this not an advantage? Is it not a sign of immense progress that the masses should have "ideas," that is to say, should be cultured? By no means. The "ideas" of the average man are not genuine ideas, nor is their possession culture. An idea is a putting truth in checkmate. Whoever wishes to have ideas must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them, a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion. These standards are the principles on which culture rests.

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Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 day ago
Man in the electronic age has...

Man in the electronic age has no possible environment except the globe and no possible occupation except information-gathering.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
5 months 4 days ago
Philosophy is by its nature something...

Philosophy is by its nature something esoteric, neither made for the mob nor capable of being prepared for the mob.

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Introduction to the Critical Journal of Philosophy, cited in W. Kaufmann, Hegel (1966), p. 56
Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
1 month 3 weeks ago
The virtues are not poured into...

The virtues are not poured into us, they are natural. Seek, and you will find them: neglect, and you will lose them.

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Uses and Sanctions, no. 22
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 2 weeks ago
The universities are schools of education,...

The universities are schools of education, and schools of research. But the primary reason for their existence is not to be found either in the mere knowledge conveyed to the students or in the mere opportunities for research afforded to the members of the faculty. Both these functions could be performed at a cheaper rate, apart from these very expensive institutions. Books are cheap, and the system of apprenticeship is well understood. So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century. Yet the chief impetus to the foundation of universities came after that date, and in more recent times has even increased. The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning.

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
3 months 2 weeks ago
It suffices to remember how many...

It suffices to remember how many sorrows he is spared who no longer thinks too many thoughts, how much more "in accordance with reality" a person behaves when he affirms that the real is the right, how much more capacity to use the machinery falls to the person who integrates himself with it uncomplainingly.

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p. 286
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
3 months 6 days ago
We live in a world where...

We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.

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"The Implosion of Meaning in the Media," p. 79
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 1 day ago
I don't believe in flying saucers......

I don't believe in flying saucers... The energy requirements of interstellar travel are so great that it is inconceivable to me that any creatures piloting their ships across the vast depths of space would do so only in order to play games with us over a period of decades.

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Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
2 months 2 weeks ago
By and large, mothers and housewives...

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 day ago
In an age of multiple and...

In an age of multiple and massive innovations, obsolescence becomes the major obsession.

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"Innovation is obsolete", Evergreen review, Volume 15, Issues 86-94, Grove Press, 1971, p. 64
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 4 weeks ago
Most of the texts... preserved from...

Most of the texts... preserved from this period come from writers... either... affiliated with the aristocratic party, or... distrustful of democratic or radically democratic institutions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
5 months 6 days ago
Create all the happiness you are...

Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains. And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul.

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Advice to a young girl, 22 June 1830
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
5 months 5 days ago
All mortals are equal…

All mortals are equal; it is not their birth,But virtue itself that makes the difference.

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Ériphyle Act II, scene I (1732); these lines were also later used in Voltaire's Mahomet, Act I, scene IV (1741)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 3 weeks ago
Paris, which for sixty years past...

Paris, which for sixty years past has been the City of Insurrections. The French People had plumed themselves on being, whatever else they were not, at least the chosen "soldiers of liberty," who took the lead of all creatures in that pursuit, at least; and had become, as their orators, editors and litterateurs diligently taught them, a People whose bayonets were sacred, a kind of Messiah People, saving a blind world in its own despite, and earning for themselves a terrestrial and even celestial glory very considerable indeed.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 day ago
The new overkill is simply an...

The new overkill is simply an extension of our nervous system into a total ecological service environment. Such a service environment can liquidate or terminate its beneficiaries as naturally as it sustains them.

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(p. 152)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 3 weeks ago
Constitution,-the apex of all its intelligences...

Constitution,-the apex of all its intelligences and mighty instincts and dumb longings: it is I? William Conqueror's big gifts, and Edward's and Elizabeth's; Oliver's lightning soul, noble as Sinai and the thunders of the Lord: these are mine, I begin to perceive,-to a certain extent. These heroisms have I,-though rather shy of exhibiting them. These; and something withal of the huge beaver-faculty of our Arkwrights, Brindleys; touches too of the phoenix-melodies and sunny heroisms of our Shakspeares, of our Singers, Sages and inspired Thinkers all this is in me, I will hope,-though rather shy of exhibiting it on common occasions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 3 days ago
'Tis the good reader that makes...

Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear.

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Success
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
2 months 2 weeks ago
Man is a born geometer. Even...

Man is a born geometer. Even when he is expressing himself in curves, as he has done in the undulating roofs of Eastern Asia and in the flowing sculptures at Borobudur, his lines follow mathematical laws that are unknown to Nature; and he is frankly defying her when he works in rectangles. Angkor is perhaps the greatest of Man's essays in rectangular architecture that has yet been brought to light... The Buddhist stupa at Borobudur in Central Java is a lyric poem in stone, flowing round the crown of a hill to the musical accompaniment of a jagged mountain range on one side and a green expanse of rice fields on the other. Angkor is not orchestral; it is monumental. It is an epic poem which makes its effect, like the Odyssey and like Paradise Lost, by the grandeur of its structure as well as by the beauty of the details. Angkor is an epic in rectangular forms imposed upon the Cambodian jungle.

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27. Angkor
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 1 week ago
We must remove the Decalogue out...

We must remove the Decalogue out of sight and heart.

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Wilhelm Martin Leberecht De Wette, 4, 188. As cited by Jonathan Ramachandran (January 1, 2019), Lake of Fire - Hope for the Wicked One Day? - Essays in First Christianity, 5 Loaf 2 Fish Publications, p. 1264.
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 2 weeks ago
Were I a nightingale, I would...

Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.

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Book I, ch. 16, 20.
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 2 weeks ago
Do not all theists insist that...

Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based upon fear and hope, such morality has always been a vile product, imbued partly with self-righteousness, partly with hypocrisy. As to truth, justice, and fidelity, who have been their brave exponents and daring proclaimers? Nearly always the godless ones: the Atheists; they lived, fought, and died for them. They knew that justice, truth, and fidelity are not conditioned in heaven, but that they are related to and interwoven with the tremendous changes going on in the social and material life of the human race; not fixed and eternal, but fluctuating, even as life itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
1 month 4 weeks ago
The liberal world order that emerged,...

The liberal world order that emerged, that... has these pragmatic and... moral dimensions has been severely challenged in the last few years, and the sources of this challenge are numerous. One is the rise of overtly authoritarian states like China and Russia. They have consolidated their rule. They seem to be stable internally, and they are increasingly seeking to project their power and influence, their model... across international borders.

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19:23
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
5 months 1 week ago
Truth is a standard…

Truth is a standard both of itself and of falsity.

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Part II, Prop. XLIII, Scholium
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
4 months 3 weeks ago
Once he saw the officials of...

Once he saw the officials of a temple leading away some one who had stolen a bowl belonging to the treasurers, and said, "The great thieves are leading away the little thief."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month ago
In the morning, when thou art...

In the morning, when thou art sluggish at rousing thee, let this thought be present; "I am rising to a man's work."

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Meditations. v. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 4 days ago
The philosophy of Plotinus has the...

The philosophy of Plotinus has the defect of encouraging men to look within rather than to look without: when we look within we see nous, which is divine, while when we look without we see the imperfections of the sensible world. This kind of subjectivity was a gradual growth; it is to be found in the doctrines of Protagoras, Socrates, and Plato, as well as in the Stoics and Epicureans. But at first it was only doctrinal, not temperamental; for a long time it failed to kill scientific curiosity. [...] Plotinus is both an end and a beginning-an end as regards the Greeks, a beginning as regards Christendom.

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Russell, Bertrand (2008). History of Western Philosophy. Simon and Schuster. pp. 296-297. ISBN 978-1-4165-9915-9.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 1 week ago
The thing I fear….

The thing I fear most is fear.

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Ch. 18. That Men are not to judge of our Happiness till after Death (tr. Donald M. Frame)
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 week ago
It is hard to have patience...
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Main Content / General
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months ago
Truth, like light....

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 2 weeks ago
Venerate the martyrs...

Venerate the martyrs, praise, love, proclaim, honor them. But worship the God of the martyrs.

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273:9; translation from: The works of Saint Augustine, John E. Rotelle, New City Press, ISBN 1565480600 ISBN 9781565480605 p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
1 month 2 weeks ago
A man who chooses between drinking...

A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.

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1963 edition, p. 680
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 3 weeks ago
The Soldier is perhaps one of...

The Soldier is perhaps one of the most difficult things to realise; but Governments, had they not realised him, could not have existed: accordingly he is here.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 6 days ago
Religion should be .... successively freed...

Religion should be .... successively freed from all statutes based on history, and one purely moral religion rule over all, in order that God might be all in all. The veil must fall. The leading-string of sacred tradition with all its appendices becomes by degrees useless, and at last a fetter ... The humiliating difference between laymen and clergymen must disappear, and equality spring from true liberty. All this, however, must not be expected from an exterior revolution, which acts violently, and depends upon fortune In the principle of pure moral religion, which is a sort of divine revelation constantly taking place in the soul of man, must be sought the ground for a passage to the new order of things, which will be accomplished by slow and successive reforms.

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As quoted in German Thought, From The Seven Years' War To Goethe's Death : Six Lectures (1880) by Karl Hillebrand, p. 208
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 month 3 days ago
'Natural History' ought to form a...

'Natural History' ought to form a part of intellectual education, in order to correct certain prejudices which arise from cultivating the intellect by means of mathematics alone and in order to lead the student to see that the division of things into kinds, and the attribution and use of names, are processes susceptible of great precision.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month ago
..If you are troubled by external...

..If you are troubled by external circumstances, it is not the circumstances that trouble you, but your own perception of them - and they are in your power to change at any time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 1 week ago
They all attributed the peaceful dominion...

They all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point.

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Chapter XVII.
Philosophical Maxims
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