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C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 2 weeks ago
I am not asking anyone to...

I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it.

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Book III, Chapter 11, "Faith"
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 1 week ago
Everything is worth what its purchaser...

Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.

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Maxim 847
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
2 weeks 2 days ago
Let me say and not mourn:...

Let me say and not mourn: the world lives in the death of speech and sings there.

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The Silence
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
1 month 2 days ago
The characteristic feature of militarism is...

The characteristic feature of militarism is not the fact that a nation has a powerful army or navy. It is the paramount role assigned to the army within the political structure. Even in peacetime the army is supreme; it is the predominant factor in political life. The subjects must obey the government as soldiers must obey their superiors. Within a militarist community there is no freedom; there are only obedience and discipline.

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Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 2 weeks ago
The very cannibalism of the counterrevolution...

The very cannibalism of the counterrevolution will convince the nations that there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.

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"The Victory of the Counter-Revolution in Vienna," Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 7 November 1848.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 3 weeks ago
There is surely a piece of...

There is surely a piece of Divinity within us, something that was before the Elements, and owes no homage unto the Sun.

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Section 11
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 2 weeks ago
But he, with these burthens on...

But he, with these burthens on him, planned, commenced, and completed, the History of India; and this in the course of about ten years, a shorter time than has been occupied (even by writers who had no other employment) in the production of almost any other historical work of equal bulk, and of anything approaching to the same amount of reading and research. And to this is to be added, that during the whole period, a considerable part of almost every day was employed in the instruction of his children: in the case of one of whom, myself, he exerted an amount of labour, care, and perseverance rarely, if ever, employed for a similar purpose, in endeavouring to give, according to his own conception, the highest order of intellectual education.

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(p. 4)
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 2 weeks ago
Where is the prince…

Where is the prince sufficiently educated to know that for seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm?

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Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 160 from Voltaire to Frederick II of Prussia, 6 April 1767
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 2 weeks ago
What can be said can and...

What can be said can and should always be said more and more simply and clearly.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 2 weeks ago
You shall find, that there cannot...

You shall find, that there cannot be a greater spur to the attaining what you would have the eldest learn, and know himself, than to set him upon teaching it his younger brothers and sisters.

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Sec. 119
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
2 months ago
Biopiracy is biological theft; illegal collection...

Biopiracy is biological theft; illegal collection of indigenous plants by corporations who patent them for their own use.

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On biopiracy, from the booklet "No Patents on Seeds: A Handbook For Activists"
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
4 months 1 week ago
All affected can accept the consequences...

All affected can accept the consequences and the side effects that [the norm's] general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone's interests, and the consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities for regulation.

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p. 65
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
Some part of life - perhaps...

Some part of life - perhaps the most important part - must be left to the spontaneous action of individual impulse, for where all is system there will be mental and spiritual death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 1 week ago
It is the mark of a...

It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in the retrospect. We should have been cut-throats to do otherwise. And there's an end. We ought to know distinctly that we are damned for what we do wrong; but when we have done right, we have only been gentlemen, after all. There is nothing to make a work about.

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"Reflections and Remarks on Human Life", VI: Right and Wrong, published in Works: Letters and Miscellanies of Robert Louis Stevenson -- Sketches, Criticisms, Etc. (1895), p. 628.
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 2 weeks ago
Where danger shews it self, apprehension...

Where danger shews it self, apprehension cannot, without stupidity, be wanting; where danger is, sense of danger should be; and so much fear as should keep us awake, and excite our attention, industry, and vigour; but not to disturb the calm use of our reason, nor hinder the execution of what that dictates.

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Sec. 115
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
6 days ago
Much reading after a certain...

Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theaters is apt to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
An intellectual is....
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Main Content / General
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
2 months 2 weeks ago
There are plenty of good reasons...

There are plenty of good reasons for fighting," I said, "but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 1 week ago
No man is happy who does...

No man is happy who does not think himself so.

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Maxim 584
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 3 weeks ago
There is, nevertheless, a certain respect...

There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to trees and plants.

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Book II, Ch. 11. Of Cruelty
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 2 weeks ago
Forgetting when God does it in...

Forgetting when God does it in relation to sin, is the opposite of creating, since to create is to bring forth from nothing and to forget is to take back into nothing. What is hidden from my eyes, that I have never seen; but what is hidden behind my back, that I have seen. The one who loves forgives in this way; he forgives, he forgets, he blots out the sin, in love he turns toward the one he forgives; but when he turns toward him, he of course, cannot see what is lying behind his back.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
Aesop's Fly, sitting on the axle...

Aesop's Fly, sitting on the axle of the chariot, has been much laughed at for exclaiming: What a dust I do raise!

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Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
4 months 1 week ago
Those who claim to care about...

Those who claim to care about the wellbeing of human beings and the preservation of our environment should become vegetarians for that reason alone. They would thereby increase the amount of grain available to feed people elsewhere, reduce pollution, save water and energy, and cease contributing to the clearing of forests; moreover, since a vegetarian diet is cheaper than one based on meat dishes, they would have more money available to devote to famine relief, population control, or whatever social or political cause they thought most urgent. ... when nonvegetarians say that "human problems come first" I cannot help wondering what exactly it is that they are doing for human beings that compels them to continue to support the wasteful, ruthless exploitation of farm animals.

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Ch. 6: Speciesism Today
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
There is no need to worry...

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.

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"The Expanding Mental Universe", Saturday Evening Post, 7/1/1959
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
As soon as it is held...

As soon as it is held that any belief, no matter what, is important for some other reason than that it is true, a whole host of evils is ready to spring up. Discouragement of inquiry, ... is the first of these, but others are pretty sure to follow. Positions of authority will be open to the orthodox. Historical records must be falsified if they throw doubt on received opinion. Sooner or later unorthodoxy will come to be considered a crime to be dealt with by the stake, the purge, or the concentration camp. I can respect the men who argue that religion is true and therefore ought to be believed, but I can only feel profound moral reprobation for those who say that religion ought to be believed because it is useful, and that to ask whether it is true is a waste of time.

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3 quoted from Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995), Ibn Warraq
Philosophical Maxims
Porphyry
Porphyry
4 months ago
So people should abstain from other...

So people should abstain from other animals just as they should from the human.

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4, 9, 6
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
Everywhere in life, the true question...

Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.

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Essays. Goethe's Helena.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 1 week ago
The world is the totality of...

The world is the totality of facts, not things.

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(1.1) Original German: Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen, nicht der Dinge
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 2 weeks ago
Thus every action must be due...

Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
4 months 2 weeks ago
It is, I think, safe to...

It is, I think, safe to say that nothing was more alien to the minds of the scientists, who brought about the most radical and most rapid revolutionary process the world has ever seen, than any will to power. Nothing was more remote than any wish to 'conquer space' and to go to the moon. It was indeed their search for 'true reality' that led them to lose confidence in appearances, in the phenomena as they reveal themselves of their own accord to human sense and reason. They were inspired by an extraordinary love of harmony and lawfulness which taught them that they would have to step outside any merely given sequence or series of occurrences if they wanted to discover the overall beauty and order of the whole, that is, the universe.

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On scientific discovery, in Between Past and Future (1961) as quoted in Ideas in literature: Ten things Hannah Arendt said that are eerily relevant in today's political times
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 1 day ago
Appearances to the mind are of...

Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task.

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Book I, ch. 27, § 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 4 weeks ago
Its first ethical precept is the...

Its first ethical precept is the identity of means used and aims sought. The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and wellbeing. Unless this be the essential aim of revolution, violent social changes would have no justification. For external social alterations can be, and have been, accomplished by the normal processes of evolution. Revolution, on the contrary, signifies not mere external change, but internal, basic, fundamental change. That internal change of concepts and ideas, permeating ever-larger social strata, finally culminates in the violent upheaval known as revolution.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 3 weeks ago
Justice is the end of government....

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be, pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.

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Chapter XV.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 3 weeks ago
Just as the performance of the...

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

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F 87
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
A human being possessed by a...

A human being possessed by a belief and not eager to pass it on to others is a phenomenon alien to the earth, where our mania for salvation makes life unbreathable.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
Anyone can escape into sleep, we...

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 2 weeks ago
If anything extraordinary seems to have...

If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say.

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Ch. 1: "The Scope of this Book"
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 1 day ago
The man who…

The man who hopes for naught at least has naught to fear.

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Line 163;
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 2 weeks ago
But it is clear there is...

But it is clear there is a difference in the ends proposed: for in some cases they are activities, and in others results beyond the mere activities, and where there are certain ends beyond and beside the actions, the results are naturally superior to the activities. Now, as there are numerous kinds of actions and numerous arts and sciences, it follows that the ends are also various. Thus the end of the healing art is health, of ship-building ships, of strategy victory, of economy wealth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 6 days ago
If...it be a thing external that...

If...it be a thing external that causes thy grief, know, that it is not that properly that doth cause it, but thine own conceit and opinion concerning the thing: which thou mayest rid thyself of, when thou wilt.

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VIII, 45
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
Act, if you like,-but you do...

Act, if you like,-but you do it at your peril. Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action. What they have done commits and enforces them to do the same again. The first act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a sacrament. The fiery reformer embodies his aspiration in some rite or covenant, and he and his friends cleave to the form, and lose the aspiration. The Quaker has established Quakerism, the Shaker has established his monastery and his dance; and, although each prates of spirit, there is no spirit, but repetition, which is anti-spiritual.

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Goethe; or, the Writer
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
It is remarkable that among all...

It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.

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p. 489
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
The secret of happiness is to...

The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.

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Said in conversation with Mrs. Alan Wood; quoted in Alan Wood's Bertrand Russell, the Passionate Sceptic (Allen and Unwin, 1957), pp. 236-7
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 1 day ago
"He is a slave." His soul,...

"He is a slave." His soul, however, may be that of a freeman. "He is a slave." But shall that stand in his way? Show me a man who is not a slave; one is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to ambition, and all men are slaves to fear.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 1 day ago
Why does...

Why does God afflict the best of men with ill-health, or sorrow, or other troubles? Because in the army the most hazardous services are assigned to the bravest soldiers: a general sends his choicest troops to attack the enemy in a midnight ambuscade, to reconnoitre his line of march, or to drive the hostile garrisons from their strong places. No one of these men says as he begins his march, " The general has dealt hardly with me," but "He has judged well of me."

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De Providentia (On Providence), 4.8, translated by Aubrey Stewart
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 6 days ago
If the Superior Man is...

If the Superior Man is not serious, then he will not inspire awe in others. If he is not learned, then he will not be on firm ground. He takes loyalty and good faith to be of primary importance, and has no friends who are not of equal (moral) caliber. When he makes a mistake, he doesn't hesitate to correct it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 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
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 1 week ago
I have never seen a class...

I have never seen a class so deeply demoralised, so incurably debased by selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress, as the English bourgeoisie; and I mean by this, especially the bourgeoisie proper, particularly the Liberal, Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie. For it nothing exists in this world, except for the sake of money, itself not excluded. It knows no bliss save that of rapid gain, no pain save that of losing gold. In the presence of this avarice and lust of gain, it is not possible for a single human sentiment or opinion to remain untainted.

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p. 275
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
1 month 4 weeks ago
I have learned by some experience,...

I have learned by some experience, by many examples, and by the writings of countless others before me, also occupied in the search, that certain environments, certain modes of life, certain rules of conduct are more conducive to inner and outer harmony than others. There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow. Simplification of life is one of them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mozi
Mozi
3 weeks 3 days ago
When we try to develop and...

When we try to develop and procure benefits for the world with universal love as our standard, then attentive ears and keen eyes will respond in service to one another, then limbs will be strengthened to work for one another, and those who know the Tao will untiringly instruct others. Thus the old and those who have neither wife nor children will have the support and supply to spend their old age with, and the young and weak and orphans will have the care and admonition to grow up in. When universal love is adopted as the standard, then such are the consequent benefits. It is incomprehensible, then, why people should object to universal love when they hear it.

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Book 4; Universal Love III
Philosophical Maxims
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