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Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 4 days ago
We have reached the point where...

We have reached the point where the Objective Logic turns into the Subjective Logic, or, where subjectivity emerges as the true form of objectivity. We may sum up Hegel's analysis in the following schema: The true form of reality requires freedom. Freedom requires self-consciousness and knowledge of the truth. Self-consciousness and knowledge of the truth are the essentials of the subject. The form of reality must be conceived as subject.

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P. 154-155
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
Worry means always and invariably inhibition...

Worry means always and invariably inhibition of associations and loss of effective power. Of course, the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith; and this, of course, you also know. The turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed, and to him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities the hourly vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant things. The really religious person is accordingly unshakable and full of equanimity, and calmly ready for any duty that the day may bring forth.

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"The Gospel of Relaxation"
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
Much of the modern resistance to...

Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men's belief that they "own" their bodies - those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another!

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Letter XXI
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
1 month 1 week ago
If insistence on them tends to...

If insistence on them tends to unsettle established systems ... self-evident truths are by most people silently passed over; or else there is a tacit refusal to draw from them the most obvious inferences.

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Ethics (New York:1915), § 14, pp. 38-39
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Finally, every man will become dear...

Finally, every man will become dear and pleasing to every other man; all will be beloved by all! and, what is still more desirable, beloved also by Christ; to become acceptable to whom is the highest felicity of human nature.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 4 days ago
The guiding question of Marx's analysis...

The guiding question of Marx's analysis was, How does capitalist society supply its members with the necessary use-values? And the answer disclosed a process of blind necessity, chance, anarchy and frustration. The introduction of the category of use-value was the introduction of a forgotten factor, forgotten, that is, by the classical political economy which was occupied only with the phenomenon of exchange value. In the Marxian theory, this factor becomes an instrument that cuts through the mystifying reification of the commodity world.

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P. 304
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 1 week ago
To the gross senses the chair...

To the gross senses the chair seems solid and substantial. But the gross senses and be refined by means of instruments. Closer observations are made, as the result of which we are forced to conclude that the chair is "really" a swarm of electric charges whizzing about in empty space. ... While the substantial chair is an abstraction easily made from the memories of innumerable sensations of sight and touch, the electric charge chair is a difficult and far-fetched abstraction from certain visual sensations so excessively rare (they can only come to us in the course of elaborate experiments) that not one man in a million has ever been in the position to make it for himself. The overwhelming majority of us accept the electric-charge chair on authority, as good Catholics accept transubstantiation.

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"One and Many," pp. 8-9
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 week 3 days ago
Native societies did not think of...

Native societies did not think of themselves as being in the world as occupants but considered that their rituals created the world and keep it operational.

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College and University Journal, Volumes 6-7, American College Public Relations Association, 1967, p. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 week ago
The Dantean conceptions of Inferno were...

The Dantean conceptions of Inferno were childish and unworthy of the Divine imagination: fire and torture. Boredom is much more subtle. The inner torture of a mind unable to escape itself in any way, condemned to fester in its own exuding mental pus for all time, is much more fitting. Oh, yes, my friend, we have been judged, and condemned, too, and this is not Heaven, but hell.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
2 months 1 week ago
It may be expedient but it...

It may be expedient but it is not just that some should have less in order that others may prosper.

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Chapter I, Section 3, pg. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 2 days ago
Let's put a limit to the...

Let's put a limit to the scramble for money. ... Having got what you wanted, you ought to begin to bring that struggle to an end.

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Book I, satire i, lines 92-94, as translated by N. Rudd
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
Do you think that I count...

Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

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Act 10, sc. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
2 months 2 weeks ago
There are two distinct classes of...

There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 week ago
Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.

Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.

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Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
3 weeks 3 days ago
Chronic boredom - compensated or uncompensated...

Chronic boredom - compensated or uncompensated - constitutes one of the major psychopathological phenomena in contemporary technotronic society, although it is only recently that it has found some recognition.

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p. 273
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 1 day ago
When we know....
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A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
1 month 1 week ago
No moral system can rest solely...

No moral system can rest solely on authority.

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Humanist Outlook (1968), p. 4.
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 weeks ago
The human soul has need of...

The human soul has need of disciplined participation in a common task of public value, and it has need of personal initiative within this participation. The human soul has need of security and also of risk. The fear of violence or of hunger or of any other extreme evil is a sickness of the soul. The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is also a sickness of the soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
He was free, free in every...

He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.

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L'âge de raison (The Age of Reason)
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
2 months 1 week ago
Real power begins where secrecy begins....

Real power begins where secrecy begins.

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Part 3, Ch. 12, § 1
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 1 week ago
What should we gain by a...

What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?

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p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 week 2 days ago
A beautiful face….

A beautiful face is a silent commendation.

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Maxim 283
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
2 months 3 weeks ago
Mahomet established a religion…

Mahomet established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ, by commanding his followers to lay down their own lives.

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Thoughts on Religion and Philosophy (W. Collins, 1838), Ch. XVI, p. 202
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 month 1 week ago
To romanticize the world is to...

To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.

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As quoted in "Bildung in Early German Romanticism" by Frederick C. Beiser, in Philosophers on Education : Historical Perspectives (1998) by Amélie Rorty, p. 294
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 1 week ago
For the world to become….

For the world to become philosophic amounts to philosophy's becoming world-order reality; and it means that philosophy, at the same time that it is realized, disappears.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 4 days ago
The happy consciousness is shaky enough-a...

The happy consciousness is shaky enough-a thin surface over fear, frustration, and disgust.

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p. 76
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 3 days ago
Man must not only make himself:...

Man must not only make himself: the weightiest thing he has to do is to determine what he is going to be. He is causa sui to the second power.

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As quoted in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, p. 155
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 1 week ago
The refined and active, on the...

The refined and active, on the other hand, prefer honour, which I suppose may be said to be the end of the political life. Yet honour is plainly too superficial to be the object of our search, because it appears to depend rather on those who give than on those who receive it, whereas we feel instinctively that the good must be something proper to a man, which cannot easily be taken from him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 3 weeks ago
The unassisted hand and the understanding...

The unassisted hand and the understanding left to itself possess but little power. Effects are produced by the means of instruments and helps, which the understanding requires no less than the hand; and as instruments either promote or regulate the motion of the hand, so those that are applied to the mind prompt or protect the understanding.

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Aphorism 2
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
The blazing evidence of immortality is...

The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution.

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July 1855
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 1 day ago
Life grants nothing…

Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.

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Book I, satire ix, line 59
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
1 month 1 week ago
We have unmistakable proof that throughout...

We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong.

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Vol. I, Part III, Ch. 2 General Aspects of the Special-Creation-Hypothesis
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 2 weeks ago
People who invented the word charity,...

People who invented the word charity, and used it in a good sense, inculcated more clearly, and much more efficaciously, the precept, Be charitable, than any pretended legislator or prophet, who should insert such a maxim in his writings.

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Part I, Essay 22: Of the Standard of Taste
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 1 week ago
Science raises itself above all Ages...

Science raises itself above all Ages and all Times, embracing and apprehending the ONE UNCHANGING TIME as the higher source of all Ages and Epochs, and grasping that vast idea in its free, unbounded comprehension.

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p. 11
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 2 weeks ago
In all ages of the world,...

In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty; and it is certain, that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded on fixed reasons of interest and ambition. Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds, on which it is commonly founded; and, by an infallible connexion, which prevails among all kinds of liberty, this privilege can never be enjoyed, at least has never yet been enjoyed, but in a free government.

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Part I, Essay 9: Of The Parties of Great Britain
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 1 week ago
If someone is merely ahead of...

If someone is merely ahead of his time, it will catch up to him one day.

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p. 8e
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
It looks to me to be...

It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 week ago
When you write a short story...

When you write a short story ... you had better know the ending first. The end of a story is only the end to the reader. To the writer, it's the beginning. If you don't know exactly where you're going every minute you're writing, you'll never get there or anywhere.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
Need and struggle are what excite...

Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us; our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.

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"Is Life Worth Living?"
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 week 1 day ago
Sanity itself is a kind of...

Sanity itself is a kind of convention.

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The Hunter's Family
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 2 weeks ago
I have often seen an actor...

I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep.

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"Paradox on Acting" (1830), as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
Quietism is the attitude of people...

Quietism is the attitude of people who say, "let others do what I cannot do." The doctrine I am presenting before you is precisely the opposite of this, since it declares that there is no reality except in action. It goes further, indeed, and adds, "Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is." Hence we can well understand why some people are horrified by our teaching.

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p. 41
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 2 weeks ago
Does a man of sense run...

Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries.

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Letters
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
Lord, give me the capacity of...

Lord, give me the capacity of never praying, spare me the insanity of all worship, let this temptation of love pass from me which would deliver me forever unto You. Let the void spread between my heart and heaven! I have no desire to people my deserts by Your presence, to tyrannize my nights by Your light, to dissolve my Siberias beneath Your sun.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 1 week ago
It was the period of my...

It was the period of my mental progress which I have now reached that I formed the friendship which has been the honour and chief blessing of my existence, as well as the source of a great part of all that I have attempted to do, or hope to effect hereafter, for human improvement. My first introduction to the lady who, after a friendship of twenty years, consented to become my wife, was in 1830, when I was in my twenty-fifth and she in her twenty-third year.

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(p. 184)
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 1 week ago
A philosopher who is not taking...

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.

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Conversation of 1930
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Just now
Our liberty is neither Greek nor...

Our liberty is neither Greek nor Roman; but essentially English. It has a character of its own,-a character which has taken a tinge from the sentiments of the chivalrous ages, and which accords with the peculiarities of our manners and of our insular situation. It has a language, too, of its own, and a language singularly idiomatic, full of meaning to ourselves, scarcely intelligible to strangers.

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History', The Edinburgh Review (May 1828), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. I (1860), pp. 252-253
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 4 days ago
Technical progress and more comfortable living...

Technical progress and more comfortable living permit the systematic inclusion of libidinal components into the realm of commodity production and exchange. But no matter how controlled the mobilization of instinctual energy may be (it sometimes amounts to a scientific management of libido), no matter how much it may serve as a prop for the status quo-it is also gratifying to the managed individuals, just as racing the outboard motor, pushing the power lawn mower, and speeding the automobile are fun.

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p. 75
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 weeks 4 days ago
The case is a good example...

The case is a good example of what Van Vogt came to call "the violent man" or the "Right Man." He is a man driven by a manic need for self-esteem - to feel that he is a "somebody." He is obsessed by the question of "losing face," so will never, under any circumstances, admit that he might be in the wrong.

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p. 211
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 2 weeks ago
There must be a seed of...

There must be a seed of every good thing in the character of men, otherwise no one can bring it out. Lacking that, analogous motives, honor, etc., are substituted. Parents are in the habit of looking out for the inclinations, for the talents and dexterity, perhaps for the disposition of their children, and not at all for their heart or character.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 13
Philosophical Maxims
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