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Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 3 weeks ago
The end of history is, alas,...

The end of history is, alas, also the end of the dustbins of history. There are no longer any dustbins for disposing of old ideologies, old regimes, old values. Where are we going to throw Marxism, which actually invented the dustbins of history? (Yet there is some justice here since the very people who invented them have fallen in.) Conclusion: if there are no more dustbins of history, this is because History itself has become a dustbin. It has become its own dustbin, just as the planet itself is becoming its own dustbin.

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The Illusion of the End (1992) (L'Illision de la Fin) Tr. Chris Turner, 1994, Stanford University Press, ISBN 0804725012, p. 26, "The Event Strike"
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 weeks ago
I have in general no very...

I have in general no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
3 weeks 6 days ago
Human beings act, certainly. But none...

Human beings act, certainly. But none of them knows why they act as they do. There is a scattering of facts, which can be known and reported. Beyond these facts are the stories that are told. Human beings may behave like puppets, but no one is pulling the strings.

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In The Puppet Theatre: Puppetry, Conspiracy and Ouija Boards (p. 136)
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 3 weeks ago
It was a purely Christian satisfaction...

It was a purely Christian satisfaction to me that if ordinarily there was no one else there was one who in action tried a little to do the doctrine about loving the neighbor, alas, one who precisely by his act also received a frightful into what an illusion Christendom is and indeed, particularly later, also into how the common people let themselves be seduced by wretched journalists, whose striving and fighting for equality can only lead, if it leads to anything, since it is in the service of the lie, to making the elite, in self-defense, proud of their aloofness from the common man, and the common man brazen in his rudeness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
3 months 1 week ago
If I had to lay bets,...

If I had to lay bets, my bet would be that everything is going to go to hell, but, you know, what else have we got except hope?

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"Richard Rorty Interviewed by Gideon Lewis-Kraus." The Believer, June 2003.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 2 weeks ago
I think they do it to...

I think they do it to pass the time, nothing more. But time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.

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Diary entry of Friday (2 February), concerning a card game
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 3 weeks ago
Boredom is like a pitiless zooming...

Boredom is like a pitiless zooming in on the epidermis of time. Every instant is dilated and magnified like the pores of the face.

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Chapter 3
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
2 months 3 weeks ago
The errors of Communism must be...

The errors of Communism must be rectified; but there is no necessity for giving up the name, which is a simple assertion of the paramount importance of Social Feeling. However, now that we have happily passed from monarchy to republicanism, the name of Communist is no longer indispensable; the word Republican expresses the meaning as well, and without the same danger. Positivism, then, has nothing to fear from Communism; on the contrary, it will probably be accepted by most Communists among the working classes, especially in France where abstractions have but little influence on minds thoroughly emancipated from theology. The people will gradually find that the solution of the great social problem which Positivism offers is better than the Communistic solution.

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p. 169
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
2 weeks 2 days ago
Just sit back and listen to...

Just sit back and listen to some of the clamorous grievances against the contemporary global system. Our list does not pretend to be comprehensive, and the partiality of its selections will undoubtedly reveal our own blindnesses, but it should nonetheless give a sense of the range and depth of today's grievances.

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270
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
Society is undergoing a silent revolution,...

Society is undergoing a silent revolution, which must be submitted to, and which takes no more notice of the human existences it breaks down than an earthquake regards the houses it subverts. The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way. But can there be anything more puerile, more short-sighted, than the views of those Economists who believe in all earnest that this woeful transitory state means nothing but adapting society to the acquisitive propensities of capitalists, both landlords and money-lords?

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"Forced Emigration," New York Daily Tribune, 22 March 1853.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
8 months 2 weeks ago
Subgroups are secondary

No subgroup, race, nationalism, religious group, gender based groups or other identity essence based groups will ever be more important than, and should never ethically take precedence over the existence based universal group, the human group. Universal identity takes precedence over subgroup identity, and when we are forced to subgroup in reaction to injustice, that is the only ethical subgroup.

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Propositions / General
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 1 week ago
All they that take the sword...

All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

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Matthew 26:52 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 weeks ago
Hypocrisy is a universal phenomenon. It...

Hypocrisy is a universal phenomenon. It ends with death, but not before.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
3 months 2 weeks ago
All affected can accept the consequences...

All affected can accept the consequences and the side effects that [the norm's] general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone's interests, and the consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities for regulation.

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p. 65
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 3 weeks ago
That which parents should take care...

That which parents should take care of... is to distinguish between the wants of fancy, and those of nature.

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Sec. 107
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 3 weeks ago
A false science makes atheists, a...

A false science makes atheists, a true science prostrates men before the Deity.

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The critical review, or annals of literature, Volume XXVI, by A Society of Gentlemen (1768) p. 450
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 3 weeks ago
The world is not dialectical --...

The world is not dialectical -- it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil.

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Jean Baudrillard in: Eldon Taylor What Does That Mean?: Exploring Mind, Meaning, and Mysteries, Hay House, Inc, 15 January 2010, p. 171
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
3 months 1 week ago
The capacity to reason is a...

The capacity to reason is a special sort of capacity because it can lead us to places that we did not expect to go.

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Chapter 4, Reason, p. 88
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 2 weeks ago
In the old system, the body...

In the old system, the body of the condemned man became the king's property, on which the sovereign left his mark and brought down the effects of his power. Now he will be rather the property of society, the object of a collective and useful appropriation.

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Chapter Three, The Gentle Way in Punishment
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
2 months 2 weeks ago
Lassalle. It would be a pity...

Lassalle. It would be a pity about the fellow because of his great ability, but these goings-on are really too bad. He was always a man one had to keep a devilish sharp eye on and as a real Jew from the Slav border was always to exploit anyone for his own private ends on party pretexts. And then his urge to push his way into polite society, de parvenir, if only for appearance's sake, to disguise the greasy Breslau Jew with all kinds of pomade and paint was always repulsive.

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Letter to Karl Marx (7 March 1856), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 40. Letters 1856-59 (2010), p. 27
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 6 days ago
Opinion considers....
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Main Content / General
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 day ago
Speaking as of today, I do...

Speaking as of today, I do not consider it intellectually respectable to be a partisan in matters of religion. I see religion as I see such other basic fascinations as art and science, in which there is room for many different approaches, styles, techniques, and opinions. Thus I am not formally a committed member of any creed or sect and hold no particular religious view or doctrine as absolute. I deplore missionary zeal, and consider excessive dedication to and advocacy of any particular religion, as either the best or the only true way, an almost irreligious arrogance. Yet my work and my life are fully concerned with religion, and the mystery of being is my supreme fascination, though, as a shameless mystic, I am more interested in religion as feeling and experience than as conception and theory.

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p. 61
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 2 weeks ago
Believe me, there is no such...

Believe me, there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory...Everything is forgotten, even great love.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 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
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 3 weeks ago
A general State education is a...

A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.

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Ch. V: Applications
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
To choose one sock from each...

To choose one sock from each of infinitely many pairs of socks requires the Axiom of Choice, but for shoes the Axiom is not needed.

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As quoted in Williams' Weighing the Odds: A Course in Probability and Statistics (2001), p. 498
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
You can hardly convince a man...

You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
3 months 1 week ago
Man is a universe in little...

Man is a universe in little [Microcosm].

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Freeman (1948), p. 150
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 2 weeks ago
I am trying here to prevent...

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic-on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

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Book II, Chapter 3, "The Shocking Alternative"
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
All media exists to invest our...

All media exists to invest our lives with artificial perception and arbitrary values.

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(p. 199)
Philosophical Maxims
Paracelsus
Paracelsus
5 days ago
All is interrelated. Heaven and earth,...

All is interrelated. Heaven and earth, air and water. All are but one thing; not four, not two and not three, but one. Where they are not together, there is only an incomplete piece.

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Paracelsus - Collected Writings Vol. I (1926) edited by Bernhard Aschner, p. 110
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
I think modern educational theorists are...

I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attach too much importance to the negative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little to the positive merit of enjoying their company.

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Ch. 12: Education and Discipline
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 1 week ago
Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps...

Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps over the carpets of Aristippus. The cynic pullulated at every corner, and in the highest places. This cynic did nothing but saboter the civilisation of the time. He was the nihilist of Hellenism. He created nothing, he made nothing. His role was to undo - or rather to attempt to undo, for he did not succeed in his purpose. The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. What would become of the cynic among a savage people where everyone, naturally and quite seriously, fulfils what the cynic farcically considers to be his personal role?

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Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
Every one who has a heart...

Every one who has a heart and eyes sees that you, working men, are obliged to pass your lives in want and in hard labor, which is useless to you, while other men, who do not work, enjoy the fruits of your labor-that you are the slaves of these men, and that this ought not to exist.

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To the Working People, Complete Works, trans. Leo Wiener, Vol 24, p. 129
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 1 week ago
Isolation is the worst possible counselor....

Isolation is the worst possible counselor.

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Civilization is Civilism
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 2 weeks ago
He who carries self-regard far enough...

He who carries self-regard far enough to keep himself in good health and high spirits, in the first place thereby becomes an immediate source of happiness to those around, and in the second place maintains the ability to increase their happiness by altruistic actions. But one whose bodily vigour and mental health are undermined by self-sacrifice carried too far, in the first place becomes to those around a cause of depression, and in the second place renders himself incapable, or less capable, of actively furthering their welfare. In estimating conduct we must remember that there are those who by their joyousness beget joy in others, and that there are those who by their melancholy cast a gloom on every circle they enter.

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Ethics (New York:1915), § 72, pp. 193-194
Philosophical Maxims
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
2 months 1 week ago
Philosophy is in history, and is...

Philosophy is in history, and is never independent of historical discourse. But for the tacit symbolism of life it substitutes, in principle, a conscious symbolism; for a latent meaning, one that is manifest. It is never content to accept its historical situation. It changes this situation by revealing it to itself.

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p. 57
Philosophical Maxims
Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
2 months 6 days ago
It is within science itself, and...

It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described.

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Theories and Things, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
Everyone is mistaken, everyone lives in...

Everyone is mistaken, everyone lives in illusion. At best, we can admit a scale of fictions, a hierarchy of unrealities, giving preference to one rather than to another; but to choose, no, definitely not that...

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 4 weeks ago
I think these things [firearms] were...

I think these things [firearms] were invented by Satan himself, for they can't be defended against with (ordinary) weapons and fists. All human strength vanishes when confronted with firearms. A man is dead before he sees what's coming.

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3552
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 2 weeks ago
A sub-clerk in the post office...

A sub-clerk in the post office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them. All experiences are indifferent in this regard. There are some that do either a service or a disservice to man. They do him a service if he is conscious. Otherwise, that has no importance: a man's failures imply judgment, not of circumstances, but of himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
No production without a need. But...

No production without a need. But consumption reproduces the need.

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Introduction, p. 12.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
Leave this hypocritical prating about the...

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

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Considerations by the Way
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 4 weeks ago
In this present that God has...

In this present that God has made us, there is nothing unworthy our care; we stand accountable for it even to a hair; and is it not a commission to man, to conduct man according to his condition; 'tis express, plain, and the very principal one, and the Creator has seriously and strictly prescribed it to us. Authority has power only to work in regard to matters of common judgment, and is of more weight in a foreign language; therefore let us again charge at it in this place.

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Ch. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 4 weeks ago
Wonder is the foundation of all...

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, research is the means of all learning, and ignorance is the end.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 2 weeks ago
In the long run the answer...

In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 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
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 2 weeks ago
In any race between human numbers...

In any race between human numbers and natural resources, time is against us.

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Chapter 12 (p. 113)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 3 weeks ago
An army of principles will penetrate...

An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot; it will succeed where diplomatic management would fall: it is neither the Rhine, the Channel, nor the ocean that can arrest its progress: it will march on the horizon of the world, and it will conquer.

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Means by Which the Fund Is to Be Created
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
Communism differs from all previous movements...

Communism differs from all previous movements in that it overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all natural premises as the creatures of hitherto existing men, strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the united individuals. Its organisation is, therefore, essentially economic, the material production of the conditions of this unity; it turns existing conditions into conditions of unity. The reality, which communism is creating, is precisely the true basis for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals, insofar as reality is only a product of the preceding intercourse of individuals themselves.

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Vol. I, Part 4.
Philosophical Maxims
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