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Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 months 3 days ago
Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence....

Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the Enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.

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John Cumming trans., p. 7.
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
1 month 3 weeks ago
Truth and falsity are the most...

Truth and falsity are the most fundamental terms of rational criticism, and any adequate philosophy must give some account of these, or failing that, show that they can be dispensed with.

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"Introduction: Philosophy of language and the rest of philosophy"
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months ago
The intellectual world is divided into...

The intellectual world is divided into two classes - dilettantes, on the one hand, and pedants, on the other.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
2 months 1 week ago
I forsook the company and the...

I forsook the company and the dinner-parties, the port-wine and champagne of the middle-classes, and devoted my leisure-hours almost exclusively to the intercourse with plain working men; I am both glad and proud of having done so. Glad, because thus I was induced to spend many a happy hour in obtaining a knowledge of the realities of life-many an hour, which else would have been wasted in fashionable talk and tiresome etiquette; proud, because thus I got an opportunity of doing justice to an oppressed and calumniated class of men who with all their faults and under all the disadvantages of their situation, yet command the respect of every one but an English money-monger.

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p. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
3 months 1 week ago
In politics, love is a stranger,...

In politics, love is a stranger, and when it intrudes upon it nothing is being achieved except hypocrisy. All the characteristics you stress in the Negro people: their beauty, their capacity for joy, their warmth, and their humanity, are well-known characteristics of all oppressed people. They grow out of suffering and they are the proudest possession of all pariahs. Unfortunately, they have never survived the hour of liberation by even five minutes. Hatred and love belong together, and they are both destructive; you can afford them only in private and, as a people, only so long as you are not free.

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Letter to James Baldwin
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 1 week ago
"He who exalts himself shall be...

"He who exalts himself shall be humbled; and he who humbles himself shall be exalted." (Matthew 23:12) The person who exalts himself ... will be humbled, because a person who considers himself to be good, intelligent, and kind will not even try to become better, smarter, kinder. The humble person will be exalted, because he considers himself bad and will try to become better, kinder, and more reasonable.

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p. 110
Philosophical Maxims
Étienne de La Boétie
Étienne de La Boétie
1 week 1 day ago
There is in our souls some...

There is in our souls some native seed of reason, which, if nourished by good counsel and training, flowers into virtue, but which, on the other hand, if unable to resist the vices surrounding it, is stifled and blighted.

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Part 2
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 weeks ago
All men that are ruined, are...

All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.

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No. 1, volume v, p. 286
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 1 week ago
The woman is increasingly aware that...

The woman is increasingly aware that love alone can give her full stature, just as the man begins to discern that spirit alone can endow his life with its highest meaning. Fundamentally, therefore, both seek a psychic relation to the other, because love needs the spirit, and the spirit love, for their fulfillment.

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p. 185
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 weeks ago
Religious persecution may shield itself under...

Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.

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Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (18 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Tenth (1899), pp. 7-8
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 1 week ago
As far as we can discern,...

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

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p. 326
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 1 week ago
It is not by recognizing the...

It is not by recognizing the want of courage in someone else that you acquire courage yourself.

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p. 44e
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
To found a family. I think...

To found a family. I think it would have been easier for me to found an empire.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 4 weeks ago
What has the Church done to...

What has the Church done to thee, that thou shouldst wish to decapitate her? Thou wouldst take away her Head, and believe in the Head alone, despising the body. Vain is thy service, and false thy devotion to the Head. For to sever it from the body is an injury to both Head and body.

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p.420
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 1 week ago
Let a fool hold….

Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.

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Maxim 914
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
His power to adore is responsible...

His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
States are doomed....
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Main Content / General
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 1 week ago
There are two godheads: the world...

There are two godheads: the world and my independent I. I am either happy or unhappy, that is all. It can be said: good or evil do not exist. A man who is happy must have no fear. Not even in the face of death. Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy.

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Journal entry (8 July 1916), p. 74e
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months ago
In the root of the word...

In the root of the word "faith" itself... there is implicit the idea of confidence, of surrender to the will of another, to a person. Confidence is placed only in persons. We trust in Providence, which we perceive as something personal and conscious, not in Fate, which is something impersonal. And thus it is in the person who tells us the truth, in the person that gives us hope, that we believe, not directly or immediately in truth itself or in hope itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
4 days ago
It is a most important social...

It is a most important social act; nay, at bottom, the one important social act. Given the men a People choose, the People itself, in its exact worth and worthlessness, is given. A heroic people chooses heroes, and is happy; a valet or flunkey people chooses sham-heroes, what are called quacks, thinking them heroes, and is not happy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 1 week ago
I do not understand! I understand...

I do not understand! I understand nothing! I cannot understand nor do I want to understand! I want to believe! To Believe!

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 1 week ago
Education has for its object the...

Education has for its object the formation of character. To curb restive propensities, to awaken dormant sentiments, to strengthen the perceptions, and cultivate the tastes, to encourage this feeling and repress that, so as finally to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious nature - this is alike the aim of parent and teacher.

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Pt. II, Ch. 17 : The Rights of Children
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
3 months 3 days ago
If one choose the goods of...

If one choose the goods of the soul, he chooses the diviner [portion]; if the goods of the body, the merely mortal.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
1 month 4 weeks ago
The bourgeoisie hides the fact that...

The bourgeoisie hides the fact that it is the bourgeoisie and thereby produces myth; revolution announces itself openly as revolution and thereby abolishes myth.

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p. 146
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 1 week ago
What is the case, the fact,...

What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.

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(2) Original German: Was der Fall ist, die Tatsache, ist das Bestehen von Sachverhalten.
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 1 week ago
One Folk, One Realm, One Leader....

One Folk, One Realm, One Leader. Union with the unity of an insect swarm. Knowledgeless understanding of nonsense and diabolism. And then the newsreel camera had cut back to the serried ranks, the swastikas, the brass bands, the yelling hypnotist on the rostrum. And here once again, in the glare of his inner light, was the brown insectlike column, marching endlessly to the tunes of this rococo horror-music. Onward Nazi soldiers, onward Christian soldiers, onward Marxists and Muslims, onward every chosen People, every Crusader and Holy War-maker. Onward into misery, into all wickedness, into death!

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 2 weeks ago
Most men pursue pleasure with such...

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
1 month 4 weeks ago
Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im...

Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.

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E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 18
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
3 months ago
Alcibiades had a very handsome dog,...

Alcibiades had a very handsome dog, that cost him seven thousand drachmas; and he cut off his tail, "that," said he, "the Athenians may have this story to tell of me, and may concern themselves no further with me."

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50 Alcibiades
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
Death poses a problem which replaces...

Death poses a problem which replaces all the others. What is deadly to philosophy, to the naive belief in the hierarchy of perplexities.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 2 weeks ago
In no other country in the...

In no other country in the world is the love of property keener or more alert than in the United States, and nowhere else does the majority display less inclination toward doctrines which in any way threaten the way property is owned.

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Book Three, Chapter XXI.
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months 1 week ago
At best the principles that economists...

At best the principles that economists have supposed the choices of rational individuals to satisfy can be presented as guidelines for us to consider when we make our decisions.

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Chapter IX, Section 84, p. 558
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 1 week ago
I'm very proud that some people...

I'm very proud that some people think that I'm a danger for the intellectual health of students. When people start thinking of health in intellectual activities, I think there is something wrong. In their opinion I am a dangerous man, since I am a crypto-Marxist, an irrationalist, a nihilist.

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Truth, Power, Self : An Interview with Michel Foucault
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 2 weeks ago
That which distinguishes the Christian narrow...

That which distinguishes the Christian narrow way from the common human narrow way is the voluntary. Christ was not someone who coveted earthly things but had to be satisfied with poverty, no, he chose poverty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 1 week ago
And striving to be man, the...

And striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form.

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May-Day
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
If just once you were depressed...

If just once you were depressed for no reason, you have been so all your life without knowing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
2 weeks 3 days ago
Utopia is a meta-utopia: the environment...

Utopia is a meta-utopia: the environment in which Utopian experiments may be tried out; the environment in which people are free to do their own thing; the environment which must, to a great extent, be realized first if more particular Utopian visions are to be realized stably.

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Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework, p. 312
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
To think is to submit to...

To think is to submit to the whims and commands of an uncertain health.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 1 week ago
It is the failing of a...

It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched. Life can be magnificent and overwhelming that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live. And M. Sartre's hero does not perhaps give us the real meaning of his anguish when he insists on those aspects of man he finds repugnant, instead of basing his reasons for despair on certain of man's signs of greatness. The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 1 week ago
Great feelings take with them their...

Great feelings take with them their own universe, splendid or abject. They light up with their passion an exclusive world in which they recognize their climate. There is a universe of jealousy, of ambition, of selfishness or generosity. A universe in other words a metaphysic and an attitude of mind.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 2 weeks ago
Homer has taught all other poets...

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 1 week ago
In particular, it is certainly wrong...

In particular, it is certainly wrong to condemn poor old Homo sapiens as the only species to kill his own kind, the only inheritor of the mark of Cain, and similar melodramatic charges. Whether a naturalist stresses the violence or the restraint of animal aggression depends partly on the kinds of animals he is used to watching, and partly on his evolutionary preconceptions-Lorenz is, after all, a 'good of the species' man. Even if it has been exaggerated, the gloved fist view of animal fights seems to have at least some truth. Superficially this looks like a form of altruism. The selfish gene theory must face up to the difficult task of explaining it. Why is it that animals do not go all out to kill rival members of their species at every possible opportunity?

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Ch. 5. Aggression: stability and the selfish machine
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 1 week ago
Every person I met believes if...

Every person I met believes if there is any disagreement between the Koran and science, then the Koran wins. It's just utterly deplorable. These are now British children who are having their minds stuffed with alien rubbish. Occasionally, my colleagues lecturing in universities lament having undergraduate students walk out of their classes when they talk about evolution. This is almost entirely Muslims.

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Dawkins attacks 'alien rubbish' taught in Muslim faith schools, Daily Mail
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 1 week ago
Man is useless passion…

Man is a useless passion.

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Part 4, Chapter 2, III
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 1 week ago
A religious symbol does not rest...

A religious symbol does not rest on any opinion. And error belongs only with opinion. One would like to say: This is what took place here; laugh, if you can.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 123
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 1 week ago
This aristocratic thesis is... the demos,...

This aristocratic thesis is... the demos, the people, are the most numerous... also comprised of the most ordinary, and... even the worst, citizens. Therefore... what is best for the demos cannot be what is best for the polis... the city.

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 3 days ago
This to the right….

This to the right, that to the left hand strays, and all are wrong, but wrong in different ways.

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Book II, satire iii, line 50 (trans. Conington)
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 1 week ago
Before we as individuals are even...

Before we as individuals are even conscious of our existence we have been profoundly influenced for a considerable time (since before birth) by our relationship to other individuals who have complicated histories, and are members of a society which has an infinitely more complicated and longer history than they do (and are members of it at a particular time and place in that history); and by the time we are able to make conscious choices we are already making use of categories in a language which has reached a particular degree of development through the lives of countless generations of human beings before us. . . . We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.

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As quoted in Popper (1973) by Bryan Magee
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 3 weeks ago
I say that man without the...

I say that man without the grace of God nonetheless remains the general omnipotence of God who effects, and moves and impels all things in a necessary, infallible course; but the effect of man's being carried along is nothing--that is, avails nothing in God's sight, nor is reckoned to be anything but sin.

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p. 265
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
7 months 2 weeks ago
Perception is part of the problem

I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem.

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Philosophical Maxims
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