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Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 1 week ago
Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both...

Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity.

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Chapter III, Part II, p. 534.
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
2 months 1 week ago
Given that annihilation of nature in...

Given that annihilation of nature in its entirety is impossible, and that death and dissolution are not appropriate to the whole mass of this entire globe or star, from time to time, according to an established order, it is renewed, altered, changed, and transformed in all its parts.

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Fifth Dialogue
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 week ago
By and large the literature of...

By and large the literature of a democracy will never exhibit the order, regularity, skill, and art characteristic of aristocratic literature; formal qualities will be neglected or actually despised. The style will often be strange, incorrect, overburdened, and loose, and almost always strong and bold. Writers will be more anxious to work quickly than to perfect details. Short works will be commoner than long books, wit than erudition, imagination than depth. There will be a rude and untutored vigor of thought with great variety and singular fecundity. Authors will strive to astonish more than to please, and to stir passions rather than to charm taste.

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Book One, Chapter XIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 2 weeks ago
What objection is there in reason...

What objection is there in reason to there being no other purpose in the sum of things save only to exist and happen as it does exist and happen? For him who places himself outside of himself, none; but for him who lives and suffers and desires within himself - for him it is a question of life or death.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 3 days ago
Virtue (or the man of virtue)....
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Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 6 days ago
To what extent can truth endure...
To what extent can truth endure incorporation? That is the question; that is the experiment.
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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 4 weeks ago
Suppose a surface to be part...

Suppose a surface to be part red and part blue; so that every point on it is either red or blue, and of course, no part can be both red and blue. What then, is the color of the surface in the immediate neighborhood of the point. ...it follows that the boundary is half red and half blue. In like manner, we find it necessary to hold that consciousness essentially occupies time... Thus, the present is half past and half time to come. ...Take another case: the velocity of a particle at any instant of time is its mean velocity during an infinitesimal instant in which that time is consumed. Just so, my immediate feeling is my feeling through an infinitesimal duration containing the present instant.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
2 months 1 day ago
Freedom is the absolute right of...

Freedom is the absolute right of every human being to seek no other sanction for his actions but his own conscience, to determine these actions solely by his own will, and consequently to owe his first responsibility to himself alone.

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As quoted in Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, Daniel Guérin, New York: NY, Monthly Review Press (1970) p. 31
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
2 months 2 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
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 3 weeks ago
The journey of a thousand miles...

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

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Philosophical Maxims
chanakya
chanakya
1 week 6 days ago
The world's biggest power is the...

The world's biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman.

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Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
1 week 5 days ago
God may not play dice but...

God may not play dice but he enjoys a good round of Trivial Pursuit every now and again.

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"God"
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 days ago
Religious suffering is, at one and...

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
4 weeks 1 day ago
We humans are an extremely important...

We humans are an extremely important manifestation of the replication bomb, because it is through us - through our brains, our symbolic culture and our technology - that the explosion may proceed to the next stage and reverberate through deep space.

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Ch. 5: The Replication Bomb
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 3 weeks ago
An autonomous electorate, free because it...

An autonomous electorate, free because it is free from indoctrination and manipulation, would indeed be on a "level of articulate opinion and ideology" which is not likely to be found. Therefore, the concept has to be rejected as "unrealistic"-has to be if one accepts the factually prevailing level of opinion and ideology as prescribing the valid criteria for sociological analysis. And-if indoctrination and manipulation have reached the stage where the prevailing level of opinion has become a level of falsehood, where the actual state of affairs is no longer recognized as that which it is, then an analysis which is methodologically committed to reject transitive concepts commits itself to a false consciousness. Its very empiricism is ideological.

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p. 117
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is the aim of public...

It is the aim of public life to arrange that all forms of power are entrusted, so far as possible, to men who effectively consent to be bound by the obligation towards all human beings which lies upon everyone, and who understand the obligation. Law is the quality of the permanent provisions for making this aim effective.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 days ago
Force is the midwife of every...

Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power.

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Vol. I, Ch. 31, pg. 824
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 4 days ago
When you are reading God's Word,...

When you are reading God's Word, it is not the obscure passages that bind you but what you understand, and with that you comply at once. If you understood only one single passage in all of Holy Scripture, well, then you must do that first of all, but you do not first have to sit down and ponder the obscure passages.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 2 weeks ago
Attention is the rarest and purest...

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

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From an April 13, 1942 letter to poet Joë Bousquet, published in their collected correspondence
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
3 months 1 week 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
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
4 weeks 1 day ago
People trifle with love. Now, I...

People trifle with love. Now, I deny that love is a strong passion. Fear is the strong passion; it is with fear that you must trifle, if you wish to taste the intensest joys of living.

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The Suicide Club, Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts.
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
3 months 1 week ago
I consider as lovers of books...

I consider as lovers of books not those who keep their books hidden in their store-chests and never handle them, but those who, by nightly as well as daily use thumb them, batter them, wear them out, who fill out all the margins with annotations of many kinds, and who prefer the marks of a fault they have erased to a neat copy full of faults.

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Letter to an unidentified friend (1489), as translated in Collected Works of Erasmus (1974), p. 58
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 3 days ago
The effectiveness of political and religious...

The effectiveness of political and religious propaganda depends upon the methods employed, not upon the doctrines taught. These doctrines may be true or false, wholesome or pernicious-it makes little or no difference.

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Chapter 7 (p. 63)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 weeks ago
You have dreamed of setting the...

You have dreamed of setting the world ablaze, and you have not even managed to communicate your fire to words, to light up a single one!

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 3 weeks ago
In conditions of private property ......

In conditions of private property ... "life-activity" stands in the service of property instead of property standing the service of free life-activity.

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"The Foundations of Historical Materialism," Studies in Critical Philosophy (1972), p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
1 month 1 week ago
Evaluations, in essence, are... ways of...

Evaluations, in essence, are... ways of being, modes of existence of those who judge and evaluate.

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p. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 days ago
The gods sell anything to everybody...

The gods sell anything to everybody at a fair price.

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Quotation and Originality
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
All passions that suffer themselves to...

All passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate.

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Ch. 2. Of Sorrow, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 4 days ago
I cannot believe - and I...

I cannot believe - and I say this with all the emphasis of which I am capable - that there can ever be any good excuse for refusing to face the evidence in favour of something unwelcome. It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.

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"The Pursuit of Truth" in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, 1993
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
2 months 1 day ago
Till mankind be satisfied with the...

Till mankind be satisfied with the naked statement of what they really perceive, till they confess virtue to be then most illustrious, when she more disdains the aid of ornament, they will never arrive at that manly justice of sentiment at which they seem destined one day to arrive. By his scheme of naked virtue will be every day a gainer; every succeeding observer willl more fully do her justice, while vice, deprived of that varnish with which she delighted to glow her actions of that gaudy exhibition which may be made alike by every pretender will speedily sink into unheeded contempt.

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Book V, Chapter 12, "Of Titles"
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 1 week ago
The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen...

The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire; for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader purchases his good always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little interest of this kind.

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Chapter III, Part II, p. 530.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 1 day ago
The media themselves are the avant-garde...

The media themselves are the avant-garde of our society. Avant-garde no longer exists in painting, music and poetry, it's the media themselves.

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p. 274
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 days ago
People seem not to see that...

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

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Worship
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
2 months 3 weeks ago
All who delight in the pleasures...

All who delight in the pleasures of the belly, exceeding all measure in eating and drinking and love, find that the pleasures are brief and last but a short while-only so long as they are eating and drinking-but the pains that come after are many and endure. The longing for the same things keeps ever returning, and whenever the objects of one's desire are realized forthwith the pleasure vanishes, and one has no further use for them. The pleasure is brief, and once more the need for the same things returns.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 days ago
Political Economy regards the proletarian ......

Political Economy regards the proletarian ... like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being. It leaves this to criminal law, doctors, religion, statistical tables, politics, and the beadle. ... (1) What is the meaning, in the development of mankind, of this reduction of the greater part of mankind to abstract labor? (2) What mistakes are made by the piecemeal reformers, who either want to raise wages and thereby improve the situation of the working class, or - like Proudhon - see equality of wages as the goal of social revolution?.

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First Manuscript - Wages of Labour, p. 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
2 months 2 weeks ago
There is geometry in the humming...

There is geometry in the humming of the strings. There is music in the spacings of the spheres.

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As quoted in the preface of the book entitled Music of the Spheres by Guy Murchie
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 4 weeks ago
From these two immediate perceptions, we...

From these two immediate perceptions, we gain a mediate, or inferential perception of the relation of all four instants. This mediate perception is objectively, or as to the object being represented, spread over the four instants; but subjectively, or as itself the subject of duration, it is completely embraced in the second moment. (The reader will observe that I use the word instant to mean a point in time, and moment to mean an infinitesimal duration.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 4 weeks ago
It is a universal revolution and...

It is a universal revolution and will, accordingly, have a universal range.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 2 weeks ago
In a certain sense, everything is...

In a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location. Thus every spatio-temporal standpoint mirrors the world.

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Ch. 5: "The Romantic Reaction", p. 128
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 2 weeks ago
And the conversion of the other...

And the conversion of the other Don Quixote - he who was converted only to die - was possible because he was mad, and it was his madness, and not his death or his conversion that immortalized him, earning him forgiveness for this crime of having been born. Felix culpa! And neither was his madness cured, but only transformed. His death was his last knightly adventure; in dying he stormed heaven, which suffereth violence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months ago
It is a woman's outstanding characteristic...

It is a woman's outstanding characteristic that she can do anything for the love of a man. But those women who can achieve something important for the love of a thing are most exceptional, because this does not really agree with their nature. Love for a thing is a man's prerogative. But since masculine and feminine elements are united in our human nature, a man can live in the feminine part of himself, I and a woman in her masculine part. None the less the feminine element in man is only something in the background, as is the masculine element in woman. If one lives out the opposite sex in oneself one is living in one's own background, and one's real individuality suffers. A man should live as a man and a woman as a woman.

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P. 243
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 4 weeks ago
The one intelligible theory of the...

The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws. But before this can be accepted it must show itself capable of explaining the tridimensionality of space, the laws of motion, and the general characteristics of the universe, with mathematical clearness and precision ; for no less should be demanded of every Philosophy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 3 weeks ago
All liberation depends on the consciousness...

All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude, and the emergence of this consciousness is always hampered by the predominance of needs and satisfactions which, to a great extent, have become the individual's own.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 4 weeks ago
I sit astride life like a...

I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse's good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment.

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p. 36e
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 4 days ago
For my own part, not believing...

For my own part, not believing in universal selfishness, I have no difficulty in admitting that Communism would even now be practicable among the elite of mankind, and may become so among the rest.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 1 week ago
The great end of all human...

The great end of all human industry, is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modelled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators.

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Part I, Essay 16: The Stoic
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 weeks 1 day ago
Free trade, one of the greatest...

Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.

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p. 161
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
1 month 3 weeks ago
The "kingdom of God" has become...

The "kingdom of God" has become the "other world," which stands mechanically beside "this world"-an opposition unknown to the strongest periods of Christianity.

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L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 97
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 1 week ago
A person must take care to...

A person must take care to exercise moderate discipline over the body and subject it to the Spirit by means of fasting, vigils, and labor. The goal is to have the body obey and conform - and not hinder - the inner person and faith. Unless it is held in check, we know it is the nature of the body to undermine faith and the inner person.

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pp. 71-72
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 1 week ago
The man who esteems himself as...

The man who esteems himself as he ought, and no more than he ought, seldom fails to obtain from other people all the esteem that he himself thinks due. He desires no more than is due to him, and he rests upon it with complete satisfaction.

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Section III.
Philosophical Maxims
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