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Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
2 months 2 days ago
Thus is man that great and...

Thus is man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live not only like other creatures in diverse elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds.

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Section 34
Philosophical Maxims
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman
2 weeks 3 days ago
What concerns me most here are...

What concerns me most here are the ways in which contemporary voices considered to be leftist have abandoned the philosophical ideas that are central to any left-wing standpoint: a commitment to universalism over tribalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress.

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Polity (2023), p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
The propagandist's purpose is to make...

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

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"Words and Behaviour", The Olive Tree, 1936
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 3 weeks ago
The speaker with whom I was...

The speaker with whom I was most struck, though I dissented from nearly every word he said, was Thirlwall, the historian, since Bishop of St. David's, then a Chancery barrister, unknown except by a high reputation for eloquence acquired at the Cambridge Union before the era of Austin and Macaulay. His speech was in answer to one of mine. Before he had uttered ten sentences, I set him down as the best speaker I had ever heard, and I have never since heard any one whom I placed above him.

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(p. 125)
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 weeks ago
Act as if what you do...

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

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Correspondence with Helen Keller, 1908, in The Correspondence of William James: April 1908-August 1910, Vol. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 3 weeks ago
If a lion could talk, we...

If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

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Pt II, p. 223 of the 1968 English edition
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 3 weeks ago
The unconscious is not just evil...

The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, "divine."

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The Practice of Psychotherapy, p. 364
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 2 weeks ago
Foxes have their dens and birds...

Foxes have their dens and birds have their nests, but human beings have no place to lay down and rest.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
1 month 2 weeks ago
At one time in his life...

At one time in his life the apostate radically changes his political, religious or philosophical convictions by taking up all possible means of argumentation against that which he formerly held to be true, and lives now for the sake of its negation. His new ideas and opinions consist in continuous acts of revenge on his spiritual past.

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Manfred Frings, Max Scheler (1996), p. 60
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
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 4 weeks ago
In the natural state no concept...

In the natural state no concept of God can arise, and the false one which one makes for himself is harmful. Hence the theory of natural religion can be true only where there is no science; therefore it cannot bind all men together.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 60
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
2 months 3 days ago
Of the eternal corporeal substance (which...

Of the eternal corporeal substance (which is not producible ex nihilo, nor reducible ad nihilum, but rarefiable, condensable, formable, arrangeable, and "fashionable") the composition is dissolved, the complexion is changed, the figure is modified, the being is altered, the fortune is varied, only the elements remaining what they are in substance, that same principle persevering which was always the one material principle, which is the true substance of things, eternal, ingenerable and incorruptible.

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As translated by Arthur Imerti
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
2 months 2 weeks ago
With a foolish man make no...

With a foolish man make no dispute.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
5 days ago
For as old age....
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Main Content / General
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 week ago
Like monarchy, monotheism had a martial...

Like monarchy, monotheism had a martial origin. "It is only on the march and it time of war," says Robertson Smith in The Prophets of Israel, "that a nomad people feels any urgent need of a central authority, and so it came about that in the first beginnings of national organization, centering in the sanctuary of the ark, Israel was thought of mainly as a host of Jehovah. the very name of Israel is martial, and means 'God (El) fighteth,' and Jehovah in the Old Testament is Iahwé Cebāôth - the Jehovah of the armies of Israel. It was on the battlefield that Jehovah's presence was most clearly realized; but in primitive nations the leader in time of war is also the natural judge in time of peace."

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Always put the best interpretation on...

Always put the best interpretation on a tenet. Why not on Christianity, wholesome, sweet, and poetic? It is the record of a pure and holy soul, humble, absolutely disinterested, a trutn-speaker, and bent on serving, teaching, and uplifting men. Christianity taught the capacity, the element, to Jove the All-perfect without a stingy bargain for personal happiness. It taught that to love him was happiness,-to love him in other's virtues.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months ago
The sentiments of men often differ...

The sentiments of men often differ with regard to beauty and deformity of all kinds, even while their general discourse is the same ... In all matters of opinion and science, the case is opposite: The difference among men is there oftener found to lie in generals than in particulars; and to be less in reality than in appearance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
3 weeks 1 day ago
All who have meant good work...

All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced: is there not something brave and spirited in such a termination? and does not life go down with a better grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling to an end in sandy deltas?

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316
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 3 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
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 4 weeks ago
He that will have his son...

He that will have his son have a respect for him and his orders, must himself have a great reverence for his son.

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Maxima debetur pueris reverentia [The greatest respect is owed to the children]. Sec. 71; Note: Here Locke quotes Juvenal
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 2 weeks ago
And if you lend to those...

And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.

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Jesus on usury from the Sermon on the Mount, Luke 6:34-35
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
In our fear, we are victims...

In our fear, we are victims of an aggression of the Future.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 week ago
For the mockers are those who...

For the mockers are those who die comically, and God laughs at their comic ending, while the nobler part, the part of tragedy, is theirs who endured the mockery.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 4 weeks ago
This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power,...

This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man's preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together: for a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life, when he pleases.

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Second Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. IV, sec. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 4 weeks ago
Just as the witticism brings two...

Just as the witticism brings two very different real objects under one concept, the pun brings two different concepts, by the assistance of accident, under one word.

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Volume I, Book I
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 weeks ago
It makes a tremendous emotional and...

It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.

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Lecture II, "Circumscription of the Topic"
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months ago
The establishment of any new manufacture,...

The establishment of any new manufacture, of any new branch of commerce, or any new practice in agriculture, is always a speculation, from which the projector promises himself extraordinary profits. These profits sometimes are very great, and sometimes, more frequently, perhaps, they are quite otherwise; but in general they bear no regular proportion to those of other older trades in the neighbourhood. If the project succeeds, they are commonly at first very high. When the trade or practice becomes thoroughly established and well known, the competition reduces them to the level of other trades.

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Chapter X, Part I, p. 136 (tendency of the rate of profit to fall).
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 1 week ago
When power is separated from any...

When power is separated from any communicative context, it becomes naked violence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
The most advanced nations are always...

The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.

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Civilization
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 3 weeks ago
There is no sin, and there...

There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God?

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Book II, ch. 3 (trans. Constance Garnett) The Elder Zossima, speaking to a devout widow afraid of death
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 3 weeks ago
The first character of a general...

The first character of a general idea so resulting is that it is living feeling. A continuum of this feeling, infinitesimal in duration, but still embracing innumerable parts, and also, though infinitesimal, entirely unlimited, is immediately present. And in its absence of boundedness a vague possibility of more than is present is directly felt.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 3 weeks ago
"You're a gentleman," they used to...

"You're a gentleman," they used to say to him. "You shouldn't have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that's no occupation for a gentleman."

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 4 weeks ago
Constitutional freedom, as the right of...

Constitutional freedom, as the right of every citizen to have to obey no other law than that to which he has given his consent or approval.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
2 months 3 weeks ago
Without being known too well, it...

Without being known too well, it [India] has existed for millennia in the imagination of the Europeans as a wonderland. Its fame, which it has always had with regard to its treasures, both its natural ones, and in particular, its wisdom, has lured men there.

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Friedrich Hegel .source: Contesting the Master Narrative, Jeffrey Cox and Shelton Stromquist Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013).
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 week 5 days ago
Our reverence for the nobility of...

Our reverence for the nobility of manhood will not be lessened by the knowledge, that Man, is in substance and in structure, one with the brutes; for, he alone possesses the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech, whereby, in the secular period of his existence, he has slowly accumulated and organized the experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessation of every individual life in other animals; so that now he stands raised upon it as on a mountain top, far above the level of his humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting, here and there, a ray from the infinite source of truth.

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Ch.2, p. 132
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 4 days 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
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
1 week 3 days ago
Just like Chief Seattle talked about...

Just like Chief Seattle talked about being in the web of life, in India we talk about vasudhaiva kutumbkam, which means the earth family. Indian cosmology has never separated the human from the non-human-we are a continuum.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 3 weeks ago
Like everything metaphysical the harmony between...

Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.

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§ 112
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 1 week ago
My purpose here is to denounce...

My purpose here is to denounce an idea which seems to be dangerous and false. ... Revolutionary trade unionists and orthodox communists are at one in considering everything that is purely theoretical as bourgeois. ... The culture of a socialist society would be a synthesis of theory and practice; but to synthesize is not the same as to confuse together; it is only contraries that can be synthesized. ... Marx's principal glory is to have rescued the study of societies not only from Utopianism but also and at the same time from empiricism. ... Humanity cannot progress by importing into theoretical study the processes of blind routine and haphazard experiment by which production has so long been dominated. ... The true relation between theory and application only appears when theoretical research has been purged of all empiricism.

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"The teaching of mathematics," p. 71-72
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks 5 days ago
I know that my unity with...

I know that my unity with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries and government orders.

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My Religion (1884)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
2 months 2 weeks ago
In speaking of the fear of...

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper-namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.

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The Last Word, Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 130-131.
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
5 days ago
More controversially, technology can accelerate the...

More controversially, technology can accelerate the transition from harming to helping free-living sentient beings: mankind's fitfully expanding "circle of compassion". The civilising process needn't be species-specific but instead extend to free-living dwellers in tomorrow's wildlife parks. Every cubic metre of the biosphere will soon be computationally accessible to surveillance, micro-management and control. Fertility regulation via immunocontraception can replace Darwinian ecosystems governed by starvation and predation. Any species of obligate carnivore we choose to preserve can be genetically and behaviourally tweaked into harmlessness. Asphyxiation, disembowelling, and agonies of being eaten alive can pass into the dustbin of history.

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High-tech Jainism, The World Transformed, Jul. 2014
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 4 weeks ago
Beating is the worst, and therefore...

Beating is the worst, and therefore the last means to be us'd in the correction of children, and that only in the cases of extremity, after all gently ways have been try'd, and proved unsuccessful; which, if well observ'd, there will very seldom be any need of blows.

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Sec. 84
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
That all men are equal is...

That all men are equal is a proposition which at ordinary times no sane individual has ever given his assent.

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"The Idea of Equality"
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 5 days ago
The monuments of wit survive the...

The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.

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Essex's Device
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 day ago
The territorial aristocracy of former ages...

The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distresses. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public.

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Book Two, Chapter XX.
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
3 months ago
He who seeks equality between unequals...

He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.

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Ch. 9, Of Aristocracy, Continuation
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 2 weeks ago
'Resignation' is a keynote in Comte's...

Resignation' is a keynote in Comte's writings, deriving directly from assent to invariable social laws. 'True resignation, that is, a disposition to endure necessary evils steadfastly and without any hope of compensation therefore, can result only from a profound feeling for the invariable laws that govern the variety of natural phenomena.

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P. 345
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 4 days ago
My whole heart and soul are...

My whole heart and soul are stirred and incensed against the Turks and Mohammed, when I see this intolerable raging of the Devil. Therefore I shall pray and cry to God, nor rest until I know that my cry is heard in heaven.

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Statement while being confined to residence at Coburg, as quoted in History of the Christian Church, (1910) by Philip Schaff, Vol. VII
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 3 weeks ago
As for him who neither possesses...

As for him who neither possesses nor can acquire them, let him take to heart the words of Hesiod: He is the best of all who thinks for himself in all things. He, too, is good who takes advice from a wiser (person). But he who neither thinks for himself, nor lays to heart another's wisdom, this is a useless man.

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Philosophical Maxims
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