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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
Nature magically suits the man to...

Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by making these the fruit of his character.

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Fate
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 1 week ago
The most important person is the...

The most important person is the one you are with in this moment.

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p. 206
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
3 months 1 week ago
Moderation is the spirit of castrated...

Moderation is the spirit of castrated narrow-mindedness.

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"Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)", Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #64
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 1 week ago
A great affliction of all Philistines...

A great affliction of all Philistines is that idealities afford them no entertainment, but to escape from boredom they are always in need of realities.

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E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 345
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
It is entirely clear that there...

It is entirely clear that there is only one way in which great wars can be permanently prevented, and that is the establishment of an international government with a monopoly of serious armed force.

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"The Atomic Bomb and the Prevention of War" in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 10/1/1945
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 4 weeks ago
It would be wrong to suppose...

It would be wrong to suppose that the man of any particular period always looks upon past times as below the level of his own, simply because they are past. It is enough to recall that to the seeming of Jorge Manrique, "Any time gone by was better."... From A.D. 150 on, this impression of a shrinking of vitality, of a falling from position, of decay and loss of pulse shows itself increasingly in the Roman Empire. Had not Horace already sung: "Our fathers, viler than our grandfathers, begot us who are even viler, and we shall bring forth a progeny more degenerate still"?

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Horace, Odes, III.6] Chap. III: The Height Of The Times
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 4 days ago
If death is as horrible as...

If death is as horrible as is claimed, how is it that after the passage of a certain period of time we consider happy any being, friend or enemy, who has ceased to live?

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week 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
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
Manners are of more importance than...

Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in.

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No. 1, p. 172 in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke: A New Edition, v. VIII. London: F. C. and J. Rivington, 1815
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 3 days ago
If there is.....
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Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 4 days ago
To be is to be cornered.

To be is to be cornered.

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Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
2 months 2 weeks ago
You must go to Mahometanism, to...

You must go to Mahometanism, to Buddhism, to the East, to the Sufis & Fakirs, to Pantheism, for the right growth of mysticism.

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Letter (2 March 1853), quoted in Suggestions for Thought : Selections and Commentaries (1994), edited by Michael D. Calabria and Janet A. MacRae, p. xiii
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 3 weeks ago
The truth is sum, ergo cogito...

The truth is sum, ergo cogito - I am, therefore I think, although not everything that is thinks. Is not consciousness of thinking above all consciousness of being? Is pure thought possible, without consciousness of self, without personality? Can there exist pure knowledge without feeling, without that species of materiality which feelings lends to it? Do we not perhaps feel thought, and do we not feel ourselves in the act of knowing and willing? Could not the man in the stove [Descartes] have said: "I feel, therefore I am"? or "I will, therefore I am"? And to feel oneself, is it not perhaps to feel oneself imperishable?

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 1 week ago
Accept suffering and achieve atonement through...

Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it - that is what you must do.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 1 week ago
If the material world rests upon...

If the material world rests upon a similar ideal world, this ideal world must rest upon some other; and so on, without end. It were better, therefore, never to look beyond the present material world. By supposing it to contain the principle of its order within itself, we really assert it to be God; and the sooner we arrive at that Divine Being, so much the better. When you go one step beyond the mundane system, you only excite an inquisitive humour which it is impossible ever to satisfy.

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Philo to Cleanthes, Part IV
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 week ago
In its beginnings, the credit system...

In its beginnings, the credit system sneaks in as a modest helper of accumulation and draws by invisible threads the money resources scattered all over the surface of society into the hands of individual or associated capitalists. But soon it becomes a new and formidable weapon in the competitive struggle, and finally it transforms itself into an immense social mechanism for the centralisation of capitals.

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Vol. I, Ch. 25, Section 2, pg. 687.
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 2 weeks ago
Darwinist thinkers such as Richard Dawkins...

Darwinist thinkers such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett are militant opponents of Christianity. Yet their atheism and humanism are versions of Christian concepts. As a defender of Darwinism, Dawkins is committed to the view that humans are like other animal species in being 'gene machines' ruled by the laws of natural selection. He asserts nevertheless that humans, uniquely, can defy these natural laws: 'We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.' In affirming human uniqueness in this way, Dawkins relies on a Christian world-view.

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Post-Apocalypse: After Secularism (pp. 265-6)
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 1 week ago
Experience teaches only the teachable... Tragedy...

Experience teaches only the teachable...

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Tragedy and the Whole Truth
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 1 day ago
The book of the world, so...

The book of the world, so richly studied by autodidacts, is being closed by the "learned," who are raising walls of opinions to shut the world out.

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p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 4 days ago
But if you can breed cattle...

But if you can breed cattle for milk yield, horses for running speed, and dogs for herding skill, why on Earth should it be impossible to breed humans for mathematical, musical or athletic ability? Objections such as "these are not one-dimensional abilities" apply equally to cows, horses and dogs and never stopped anybody in practice. I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitler's death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons. Or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them. I can think of some answers, and they are good ones, which would probably end up persuading me. But hasn't the time come when we should stop being frightened even to put the question? From the Afterword, The Herald

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Glasgow, Scotland, 20 November 2006
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 2 weeks ago
It is always necessary that the...

It is always necessary that the substance or essence of a person be good before there can be any good works and that good works follow and proceed from a person who is already good. Christ says in Matthew 7:18: "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit." ... The fruit does not make the tree good or bad but the tree itself is what determines the nature of the fruit. In the same way, a person first must be good or bad before doing a good or bad work.

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pp. 74-75
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
3 months 4 weeks ago
[One thing] underpins, makes consistent, and...

[One thing] underpins, makes consistent, and gives meaning to all our other activities on behalf of animals. This one thing is that we take responsibility for our own lives, and make them as free of cruelty as we can. The first step is that we cease to eat animals. Many people who are opposed to cruelty to animals draw the line at becoming a vegetarian. It was of such people that Oliver Goldsmith, the eighteenth-century humanitarian essayist, wrote: "They pity, and they eat the objects of their compassion."

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Ch. 4: Becoming a Vegetarian
Philosophical Maxims
William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford
1 week 1 day ago
I hold in fact(1) That small...

I hold in fact(1) That small portions of space are in fact of a nature analogous to little hills on a surface which is on the average flat; namely, that the ordinary laws of geometry are not valid in them.(2) That this property of being curved or distorted is continually being passed on from one portion of space to another after the manner of a wave.(3) That this variation of the curvature of space is what really happens in that phenomenon which we call the motion of matter, whether ponderable or etherial.(4) That in the physical world nothing else takes place but this variation, subject possibly to the law of continuity.

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Abstract
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 months 5 days ago
A character is a completely fashioned...

A character is a completely fashioned will.

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(vollkommen gebildeter Wille).
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 1 week ago
Faith consists…

Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.

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"The Flood", 1764
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
4 months 1 week ago
Thinking withdraws radically and for its...

Thinking withdraws radically and for its own sake from this world and its evidential nature, whereas science profits from a possible withdrawal for the sake of specific results.

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p. 56
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 week 1 day ago
The doors of heaven and hell...

The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical.

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Ch. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
4 months 1 week ago
If a man makes the press...

If a man makes the press utter atrocious things he becomes as answerable for them as if he had uttered them by word of mouth. Mr. Jefferson has said in his inaugural speech, that "error of opinion might be tolerated, when reason was left free to combat it." This is sound philosophy in cases of error. But there is a difference between error and licentiousness.

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Liberty of the Press, 1806
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 1 week ago
Everything which is demanded is by...

Everything which is demanded is by that fact a good.

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"The Will to Believe" p. 205
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
No man can have society upon...

No man can have society upon his own terms. If he seeks it, he must serve it too.

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1833
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 6 days ago
Does the interiorization of media such...

Does the interiorization of media such as letters alter the ratio among our senses and change mental processes?

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(p. 28)
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
1 month 3 weeks ago
As Gandhi taught, freedom can be...

As Gandhi taught, freedom can be reclaimed only by refusing to cooperate with unjust, immoral laws. The fight for truth-employing the principles of civil disobedience, nonviolence, and noncooperation-is not just our right as free citizens of free societies. It is our duty as citizens of the earth.

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(p184)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
No congress, nor mob, nor guillotine,...

No congress, nor mob, nor guillotine, nor fire, nor all together, can avail, to cut out, burn, or destroy the offense of superiority in persons. The superiority in him is inferiority in me.

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p. 65
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
1 month 3 weeks ago
What could be a better indication...

What could be a better indication of man's continued dependence on nature than the fact that today's so-called post-industrial societies satisfy most of their food needs through imports from so-called underdeveloped countries?

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Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 6 days ago
Marx shared with economists then and...

Marx shared with economists then and since the inability to make his concepts include innovational processes. It is one thing to spot a new product but quite another to observe the invisible new environments generated by the action of the product on a variety of pre-existing social grounds.

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(p. 63)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 4 days ago
To win the guilty kiss of...

To win the guilty kiss of a saint, I'd welcome the plague as a blessing

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 6 days ago
The ways of thinking implanted by...

The ways of thinking implanted by electronic culture are very different from those fostered by print culture. Since the Renaissance most methods and procedures have strongly tended towards stress on the visual organization of knowledge.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
Genius is always sufficiently the enemy...

Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence.

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par. 19
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 2 weeks ago
A man must be a little...

A man must be a little mad if he does not want to be even more stupid.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 1 week ago
Let me suggest a theme for...

Let me suggest a theme for you: to state to yourself precisely and completely what that walk over the mountains amounted to for you, - returning to this essay again and again, until you are satisfied that all that was important in your experience is in it. Give this good reason to yourself for having gone over the mountains, for mankind is ever going over a mountain. Don't suppose that you can tell it precisely the first dozen times you try, but at 'em again, especially when, after a sufficient pause, you suspect that you are touching the heart or summit of the matter, reiterate your blows there, and account for the mountain to yourself. Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

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Letter to Harrison Blake, November 16, 1857
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
4 months 3 weeks ago
A prudent man, in order to...

A prudent man, in order to secure his tranquility, will consult his natural disposition in the choice of his plan of life. If, for example, he be persuaded that he should be happier in a state of marriage than in celibacy, he ought to marry; but if he be convinced that matrimony would be an impediment to his happiness, he ought to remain single.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
4 weeks 1 day ago
Everywhere the human soul stands between...

Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires, - Necessity and Free Will.

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Essays, Goethe's Works.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 2 days ago
It seems to me...

It seems to me that the current political task in a society like ours is to criticize the working of institutions that are apparently the most neutral and independent, to criticize these institutions and attack them in such a way that the political violence that exercises itself obscurely through them becomes manifest, so that one can fight against them.

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Debate with Noam Chomsky, École Supérieure de Technologie à Eindhoven, November 1971
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
It is reconciled in policy; and...

It is reconciled in policy; and politics ought to be adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to human nature; of which the reason is but a part; and by no means the greatest part.

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Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769), page 78
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 4 weeks ago
Man's being is made of such...

Man's being is made of such strange stuff as to be partly akin to nature and partly not, at once natural and extranatural, a kind of ontological centaur, half immersed in nature, half transcending it.

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"Man has no nature"
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 1 week ago
In this third period

In this third period (as it may be termed) of my mental progress, which now went hand in hand with hers, my opinions gained equally in breadth and depth, I understood more things, and those which I had understood before, I now understood more thoroughly. I had now completely turned back from what there had been of excess in my reaction against Benthamism. I had, at the height of that reaction, certainly become much more indulgent to the common opinions of society and the world, and more willing to be content with seconding the superficial improvement which had begun to take place in those common opinions, than became one whose convictions on so many points, differed fundamentally from them. I was much more inclined, than I can now approve, to put in abeyance the more decidedly heretical part of my opinions, which I now look upon as almost the only ones, the assertion of which tends in any way to regenerate society.

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(p. 229)
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 1 week ago
The title wise is, for the...

The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. How can one be a wise man, if he does not know any better how to live than other men? - if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle?

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p. 487
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months ago
My kingdom is not of this...

My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.

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18: 36, (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 4 days ago
Never unreal, Pain is a challenge...

Never unreal, Pain is a challenge to the universal fiction. What luck to be the only sensation granted a content, if not a meaning!

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
5 days ago
Everything harmonizes with me, which is...

Everything harmonizes with me, which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early or too late, which is in due time for thee. There is one light of the sun, though it is interrupted by walls, mountains and infinite other things. There is one common substance, though it is distributed among countless bodies which have their several qualities. There is one soul, though it is distributed among several natures and individual limitations. There is one intelligent soul, though it seems to be divided.

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XII, 30
Philosophical Maxims
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