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Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
1 month 4 weeks ago
We must not suppose any corporeal...

We must not suppose any corporeal conjunction or marriage in the case - all which are merely the sportive fables of Poetry; but must hold the father and the producer of that Being as something most divine and super-eminent. Of such a nature is He who is above all things, around whom, and by reason of whom, all things do subsist. But Homer calls him by his father's name, "Hyperion," in order to show that he is independent, and not subjected to any constraint.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
2 months 2 weeks ago
What is objective must be common...

What is objective must be common to many minds and consequently transmissible from one to the other, and as this transmission can only come about by... discourse... we are even forced to conclude: no discourse no objectivity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 2 weeks ago
Until now a culture has been...

Until now a culture has been a mechanical fate for societies, the automatic interiorization of their own technologies.

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(p. 86)
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4 months 2 weeks ago
People talk sometimes of a bestial...

People talk sometimes of a bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
2 months 3 weeks ago
Whatever the practical origins of aesthetic...

Whatever the practical origins of aesthetic discernment may have been, it has been used to create great works of art. When the very loftiest human creations are seen to derive from humble origins and functions, what needs revision is not our esteem for these creations but our notion of nobility.

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The Nature of Rationality (1993), Ch. V : Instrumental Rationality and Its Limits; Rationality's Imagination, p. 181
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
5 months 2 weeks ago
The fault of the utilitarian doctrine...

The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.

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Chapter III, Section 30, pg. 190
Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
1 month 2 weeks ago
He who has the most imagination...

He who has the most imagination should be regarded as having the most intelligence or genius, for all these words are synonymous...

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
4 months 3 days ago
Phenomenology is not a philosophy; it...

Phenomenology is not a philosophy; it is a philosophical method, a tool. It is like an adjustable spanner that can be used for dismantling a refrigerator or a car, or used for hammering in nails, or even for knocking somebody out.

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p. 92
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
5 months 3 weeks ago
We assert then that nothing has...

We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part of the actors; and - if interest be called passion, inasmuch as the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of volition, concentrating all its desires and powers upon it - we may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion. Often abbreviated to: Nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion. Variant translation: We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
5 months 2 weeks ago
It is, in fact, far easier...

It is, in fact, far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.

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The Human Condition
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 1 week ago
Clever men are good, but they...

Clever men are good, but they are not the best.

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Goethe.
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
4 months 2 weeks ago
The ideal of Morality has no...

The ideal of Morality has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of highest Strength, of most powerful life; which also has been named (very falsely as it was there meant) the ideal of poetic greatness. It is the maximum of the savage; and has, in these times, gained, precisely among the greatest weaklings, very many proselytes. By this ideal, man becomes a Beast-Spirit, a Mixture; whose brutal wit has, for weaklings, a brutal power of attraction.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
6 months 4 days ago
Whatever you would make habitual, practice...

Whatever you would make habitual, practice it; and if you would not make a thing habitual, do not practice it, but accustom yourself to something else.

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Book II, ch. 18, 4.
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
4 months 1 week ago
"Relation" in its idiomatic usage denotes...

"Relation" in its idiomatic usage denotes something direct and active, something dynamic and energetic. It fixes attention upon the way things bear upon one another, their clashings and unitings, the way they fulfill and frustrate, promote and retard, excite and inhibit one another. Intellectual relations subsist in propositions; they state the connection of terms with one another. In art, as in nature and in life, relations are modes of interaction.

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p. 139
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
2 months 2 weeks ago
The multitude is the real productive...

The multitude is the real productive force of our social world, whereas Empire is a mere apparatus of capture that lives only off the vitality of the multitude - as Marx would say, a vampire regime of accumulated dead labor that survives only by sucking off the blood of the living.

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62
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 5 days ago
It is better…

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

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Line 45.
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
5 months 2 weeks ago
The only knowledge that can truly...

The only knowledge that can truly orient action is knowledge that frees itself from mere human interests and is based in Ideas-in other words knowledge that has taken a theoretical attitude.

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p. 301
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 3 weeks ago
Any question of philosophy ... which...

Any question of philosophy ... which is so obscure and uncertain, that human reason can reach no fixed determination with regard to it; if it should be treated at all; seems to lead us naturally into the style of dialogue and conversation.

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Pamphilus to Hermippus, Prologue
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 5 days ago
He who has injured….

He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself.

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De Ira (On Anger); Book III, Chapter V
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 4 weeks ago
I have here only made a...

I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that ties them together.

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Book III, Ch. 12. Of Physiognomy
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 2 weeks ago
...that to expect a bad person...

...that to expect a bad person not to harm others is like expecting fig trees not to secrete juice, babies not to cry, horses not to neigh-the inevitable not to happen.

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(Hays translation) XII, 16
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 months 1 week ago
I would not give up the...

I would not give up the keys to the granary, because I know that, by doing so, I should turn scarcity into a famine.

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Sullivan, p. 266
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 3 weeks ago
Although the most acute judges of...
Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.
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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
5 months 2 weeks ago
The aspects of things that are...

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something - because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. - And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.

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§ 129
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 2 weeks ago
Discourses are tactical...

Discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations; there can exist different and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy; they can, on the contrary, circulate without changing their form from one strategy to another, opposing strategy.

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Vol I, pp. 101-102
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Ridicule is the only weapon which...

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.

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Letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp (30 July 1816), denouncing the doctrine of the Trinity.
Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
1 month 4 weeks ago
It is important that man dreams,...

It is important that man dreams, but it is perhaps equally important that he can laugh at his own dreams.

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Ch. I : The Awakening, pp. 4-5
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
1 month 2 weeks ago
The vices are very justly man's...

The vices are very justly man's executioners.

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Chapter X, p. 85
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 2 weeks ago
In this book....
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Main Content / General
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
4 months 1 week ago
If I knew of…

If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman, because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.

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I.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel
2 months ago
Every relationship between two individuals or...

Every relationship between two individuals or two groups will be characterized by the ratio of secrecy that is involved in it. Even when one of the parties does not notice the secret factor, yet the attitude of the concealer, and consequently the whole relationship, will be modified by it.

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p. 462
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 2 weeks ago
Trantor could win even such a...

Trantor could win even such a war, but perhaps not without paying a price that would make victory only a pleasanter name for defeat.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 2 weeks ago
Out of the shadow of the...

Out of the shadow of the abstract man, who thinks for the pleasure of thinking, emerges the organic man, who thinks because of a vital imbalance, and who is beyond science and art.

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Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
4 months 1 week ago
Almost anything that consoles us is...

Almost anything that consoles us is a fake.

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The Sovereignty of Good (1970) p. 59.
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
9 months 3 weeks ago
Fundamental principles

The source of totalitarianism is a dogmatic attachment to the official word: the lack of laughter, of ironic detachment. An excessive commitment to Good may in itself become the greatest Evil: real Evil is any kind of fanatical dogmatism, especially exerted in the name of supreme Good... Consider only Mozart's Don Giovanni at the end of the opera, when he is confronted with the following choice: if he confesses his sins, he can still achieve salvation; if he persists, he will be damned forever. From this viewpoint of the pleasure principle, the proper thing to do would be to renounce his past, but he does not, he persists in his Evil, although he knows that by persisting he will be damned forever. Paradoxically, with his final choice of Evil, he acquires the status of an ethical hero - that is, of someone who is guided by fundamental principles beyond the pleasure principle and not just by the search for pleasure or material gain.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 3 weeks ago
The wisest man preaches no doctrines;...

The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky. If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 5 days ago
So near at hand is freedom,...

So near at hand is freedom, and is anyone still a slave?

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
4 months 3 weeks ago
I can look a whole day...

I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of a horse. It is my temper, & I like it the better, to affect all harmony, and sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres.

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Section 9
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 2 weeks ago
In an age of multiple and...

In an age of multiple and massive innovations, obsolescence becomes the major obsession.

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"Innovation is obsolete", Evergreen review, Volume 15, Issues 86-94, Grove Press, 1971, p. 64
Philosophical Maxims
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr
1 month 4 weeks ago
No, no, you are not thinking,...

No, no, you are not thinking, you are just being logical.

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In response to those who made purely formal or mathematical arguments, as quoted in What Little I Remember (1979) by Otto Robert Frisch, p. 95
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 4 weeks ago
The existence of the mind-independent environment...

The existence of the mind-independent environment beyond one's world-simulation is a theoretical inference, not an empirical observation.

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Postscript to review of Michael Lockwood's Mind, Brain and the Quantum, BLTC Research, Dec. 2016
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 6 days ago
In a general way, the literature...

In a general way, the literature of the twentieth century is essentially psychological; and psychology consists of describing states of the soul by displaying them all on the same plane, without any discrimination of value, as though good and evil were external to them, as though the effort toward the good could be absent at any moment from the thought of any man.

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"The responsibility of writers," p. 168
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
4 months 2 weeks ago
The fact disclosed by a survey...

The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have usually been wrong, must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.

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Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. I, Religion and Science
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
3 months 3 days ago
I mean to lead a simple...

I mean to lead a simple life, to choose a simple shell I can carry easily - like a hermit crab. But I do not. I find that my frame of life does not foster simplicity. My husband and five children must make their way in the world. The life I have chosen as a wife and mother entrains a whole caravan of complications.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
2 months 6 days ago
There were nowhere more docile disciples...

There were nowhere more docile disciples of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin than the Nazis were.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 4 weeks ago
He who does not give himself...

He who does not give himself leisure to be thirsty cannot take pleasure in drinking.

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Ch. 42
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
3 months 3 days ago
We must relearn to be alone.

We must relearn to be alone.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4 months 2 weeks ago
They had no temples, but they...

They had no temples, but they had a real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with the whole of the universe; they had no creed, but they had a certain knowledge that when their earthly joy had reached the limits of earthly nature, then there would come for them, for the living and for the dead, a still greater fullness of contact with the whole of the universe. They looked forward to that moment with joy, but without haste, not pining for it, but seeming to have a foretaste of it in their hearts, of which they talked to one another.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
4 months 2 weeks ago
The conscious side of woman corresponds...

The conscious side of woman corresponds to the emotional side of man, not to his "mind." Mind makes up the soul, or better, the "animus" of woman, and just as the anima of a man consists of inferior relatedness, full of affect, so the animus of woman consists of inferior judgments, or better, opinions.

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The Secret of the Golden Flower (1931) Commentary by C.G.Jung in CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P. 60
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 months 2 weeks ago
Reason has discovered the struggle for...

Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.

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Pt. VIII, ch. 13
Philosophical Maxims
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