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Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 1 week ago
The terrifying experience and obsession of...

The terrifying experience and obsession of death, when preserved in consciousness, becomes ruinous. If you talk about death, you save part of yourself. But at the same time, something of your real self dies, because objectified meanings lose the actuality they have in consciousness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
1 month 3 weeks ago
No one realizes how beautiful it...

No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.

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"A Trip to Anhwei", in With Love And Irony (1940), p. 145
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 5 days ago
Mahomet himself, after all that can...

Mahomet himself, after all that can be said about him, was not a sensual man. We shall err widely if we consider this man as a common voluptuary, intent mainly on base enjoyments, - nay on enjoyments of any kind. His household was of the frugalest; his common diet barley-bread and water: sometimes for months there was not a fire once lighted on his hearth. They record with just pride that he would mend his own shoes, patch his own cloak. A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man; careless of what vulgar men toil for.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
5 months 3 weeks ago
The most disadvantageous peace is better...

The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.

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Adagia, 1508
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 1 week ago
Someone once asked me, "If you...

Someone once asked me, "If you had your choice, Dr. Asimov, would it be women or writing?" My answer was, "Well, I can write for twelve hours at a time without getting tired."

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 3 weeks ago
The task of power is to...

The task of power is to transform the always possible 'no' into a 'yes.'

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Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
3 months 2 weeks ago
The Intentionality of the mind not...

The Intentionality of the mind not only creates the possibility of meaning, but limits its forms.

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P. 166.
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 3 weeks ago
In the long run, there is...

In the long run, there is nothing to stop intelligent agents from identifying the molecular signature of experience below hedonic zero and eliminating it altogether - even in insects. Nociception is vital; pain is optional. I tentatively predict that the world's last unpleasant experience in our forward light-cone will be a precisely datable event - perhaps some micro-pain in an obscure marine invertebrate a few centuries hence.

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The Radical Plan to Phase out Earth's Predatory Species, io9, 30 Jul. 2014
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
5 months 2 weeks ago
I have received, sir, your new...

I have received, sir, your new book against the human species, and I thank you for it. You will please people by your manner of telling them the truth about themselves, but you will not alter them. The horrors of that human society-from which in our feebleness and ignorance we expect so many consolations-have never been painted in more striking colours: no one has ever been so witty as you are in trying to turn us into brutes: to read your book makes one long to go on all fours. Since, however, it is now some sixty years since I gave up the practice, I feel that it is unfortunately impossible for me to resume it: I leave this natural habit to those more fit for it than are you and I.

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Letter to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, August 30, 1755 referring to Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 week ago
The bias of each medium of...

The bias of each medium of communication is far more distorting than the deliberate lie.

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JQ. Journalism quarterly, Volume 50, Association for Education in Journalism, 1973, p. 145
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 1 week ago
The sweetest thing in all my...

The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing - to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from - my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.

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Psyche
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 1 week ago
In a single second we do...

In a single second we do away with all seconds; God himself could not do as much.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 5 days ago
We have the greatest admiration for...

We have the greatest admiration for this learned doctor: with what scientific stoicism he walks through the land of wonders, unwondering; like a wise man through some huge, gaudy, imposing Vauxhall, whose fire-works, cascades and symphonies, the vulgar may enjoy and believe in,-but where he finds nothing real but the saltpetre, pasteboard and catgut.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
In obedience to the feeling of...

In obedience to the feeling of reality, we shall insist that, in the analysis of propositions, nothing "unreal" is to be admitted. But, after all, if there is nothing unreal, how, it may be asked, could we admit anything unreal? The reply is that, in dealing with propositions, we are dealing in the first instance with symbols, and if we attribute significance to groups of symbols which have no significance, we shall fall into the error of admitting unrealities, in the only sense in which this is possible, namely, as objects described.

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Ch. 16: Descriptions
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 2 weeks ago
I have never yet seen any...

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observation of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 1 week ago
So that is what hell is….

So that is what hell is. I would never have believed it. You remember: the fire and brimstone, the torture. Ah! the farce. There is no need for torture: Hell is other people.

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Garcin, Act 1, sc. 5
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 month 1 week ago
The assumption of a Final Cause...

The assumption of a Final Cause in the structure of each part of animals and plants is as inevitable as the assumption of an Efficient Cause for every event. The maxim that in organized bodies nothing is 'in vain', is as necessarily true as the maxim that nothing happens 'by chance'.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 week ago
Radio comes to us ostensibly with...

Radio comes to us ostensibly with person to person directness that is private and intimate, while in more urgent fact, it is really a subliminal echo chamber of magic power to touch remote and forgotten chords.

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(p. 302).
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 week ago
Every technology contrived and "outered" by...

Every technology contrived and "outered" by man has the power to numb human awareness during the period of its first interiorization.

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(p. 174)
Philosophical Maxims
Iamblichus
Iamblichus
1 month 1 week ago
The Triad has a special beauty...

The Triad has a special beauty and fairness beyond all numbers, primarily because it is the very first to make actual the potentiality of the Monad - oddness, perfection, proportionality, unification, limit.

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On the Triad
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 5 days ago
It is always a genial laughter....

It is always a genial laughter. Not at mere weakness, at misery or poverty; never. No man who can laugh, what we call laughing, will laugh at these things. It is some poor character only desiring to laugh, and have the credit of wit, that does so. Laughter means sympathy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is not when he is...

It is not when he is working in the office but when he is lying idly on the sand that his soul utters, "Life is beautiful."

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Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 1 week ago
If torture was so strongly embedded...

If torture was so strongly embedded in legal practice, it was because it revealed truth and showed the operation of power. It assured the articulation of the written on the oral, the secret on the public, the procedure of investigation on the operation of the confession; it made it possible to reproduce the crime on the visible body of the criminal.

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Chapter One, pp.55
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 3 weeks ago
Order thyself so, that thy Soul...

Order thyself so, that thy Soul may always be in good estate; whatsoever become of thy body.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
4 months 6 days ago
Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural...

Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 2 weeks ago
He was as great as a...

He was as great as a man can be without morality.

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Said of Napoleon (1842)
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 6 days ago
It is not meet to take...

It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.

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15:26 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 2 weeks ago
The principle of equality does not...

The principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.

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Book Three, Chapter XI.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
4 months 2 weeks ago
But the Quincunx of Heaven runs...

But the Quincunx of Heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasmes of sleep, which often continueth præcogitations; making Cables of Cobwebbes and Wildernesses of handsome Groves. Beside Hippocrates hath spoke so little and the Oneirocriticall Masters, have left such frigid Interpretations from plants, that there is little encouragement to dream of Paradise it self. Nor will the sweetest delight of Gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dulnesse of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the Bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a Rose.

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Ch. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 5 days ago
The inventive genius of great England...

The inventive genius of great England will not forever sit patient with mere wheels and pinions, bobbins, straps and billy-rollers whirring in the head of it. The inventive genius of England is not a Beaver's, or a Spinner's or Spider's genius: it is a Man's genius, I hope, with a God over him!

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 1 week ago
Tears do not burn except in...

Tears do not burn except in solitude.

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Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
4 months 1 week ago
"I exist" does not follow from...

"I exist" does not follow from "there is a thought now." The fact that a thought occurs at a given moment does not entail that any other thought has occurred at any other moment, still less that there has occurred a series of thoughts sufficient to constitute a single self. As Hume conclusively showed, no one event intrinsically points to any other. We infer the existence of events which we are not actually observing, with the help of general principle. But these principles must be obtained inductively. By mere deduction from what is immediately given we cannot advance a single step beyond. And, consequently, any attempt to base a deductive system on propositions which describe what is immediately given is bound to be a failure.

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p. 47.
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 1 week ago
The universal intelligence puts itself in...

The universal intelligence puts itself in motion for every separate effect... or it puts itself in motion once, and everything else comes by way of a sequence in a manner; or individual elements are the origin of all things. In a word, if there is a god, all is well; and if chance rules, do not thou be governed by it.

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IX, 28
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 1 week ago
The soul of wit may become...

The soul of wit may become the very body of untruth.

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Foreward (p. vii)
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
2 months 1 week ago
Scientists believe there is a hierarchy...

Scientists believe there is a hierarchy of facts and that among them may be made a judicious choice. They are right, since otherwise there would be no science...

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months ago
Man is said to be a...

Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason. More often I have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. Perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly - but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the second degree.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 2 weeks ago
I never turned recreant to intellectual...

I never turned recreant to intellectual culture, or ceased to consider the power and practice of analysis as an essential condition both of individual and of social improvement. But I thought that it had consequences which required to be corrected, by joining other kinds of cultivation with it. The maintenance of a due balance among the faculties, now seemed to me of primary importance. The cultivation of the feelings became one of the cardinal points in my ethical and philosophical creed.

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(pp. 143-144)
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
6 months 2 weeks ago
They pronounce absurdly who thus speak,...

They pronounce absurdly who thus speak, as the Pythagoreans assert: for at the same time they make the infinite to be essence, and distribute it into parts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 1 week ago
From the nature of things, every...

From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation. The feelings of human nature revolt against the supposition of a state so situated as that it may not in any emergency provide against dangers which perhaps threaten immediate ruin. While those bodies are in existence to whom the people have delegated the powers of legislation, they alone possess and may exercise those powers; but when they are dissolved by the lopping off one or more of their branches, the power reverts to the people, who may exercise it to unlimited extent, either assembling together in person, sending deputies, or in any other way they may think proper.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 1 week ago
I'm constantly amazed by how easily...

I'm constantly amazed by how easily we love ourselves above all others, yet we put more stock in the opinions of others than in our own estimation of self....How much credence we give to the opinions our peers have of us and how little to our very own!

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XII. 4:160
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 5 days ago
I think he once told us...

I think he once told us his first short clothes were a hull made mostly or wholly of leather. We all only laughed, for it is now long ago. Thou dear father! Through what stern obstructions was thy way to manhood to be forced, and for us and for our travelling to be made smooth!

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 1 week ago
The majority, oppressing an individual, is...

The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.

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Letter to Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
The fact that a....
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Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
4 months 5 days ago
But to manipulate men, to propel...

But to manipulate men, to propel them towards goals which you - the social reformer - see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
5 months 1 week ago
Real power begins where secrecy begins....

Real power begins where secrecy begins.

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Part 3, Ch. 12, § 1
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 4 weeks ago
The aim of science is to...

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, "Seek simplicity and distrust it."

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The Concept of Nature (1919), Chapter VII, p.143.
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
1 month 4 weeks ago
What matters the party to me?...

What matters the party to me? I shall find enough anyhow who unite with me without swearing allegiance to my flag.

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Dover 2005, p. 236
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 1 week ago
To suffer is to produce knowledge.

To suffer is to produce knowledge.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
6 months 1 week ago
Some say that the body is...

Some say that the body is the "tomb" of the soul, their notion being that the soul is buried in the present life; and again, because by its means the soul gives any signs which it gives, it is for this reason also properly called "sign". But I think it most likely that the Orphic poets gave this name, with the idea that the soul is undergoing punishment for something; they think it has the body as an enclosure to keep it safe, like a prison, and this is, as the name itself denotes, the "safe" for the soul, until the penalty is paid, and not even a letter needs to be changed.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
1 month 3 weeks ago
Nature loves to hide her secrets,...

Nature loves to hide her secrets, and she does not suffer the hidden truth about the essential nature of the gods to be flung in naked words to the ears of the profane...

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Oration to the Cynic Heracleios
Philosophical Maxims
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