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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1 week 3 days ago
One never goes so far as...

One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going.

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Letter to Carl Friedrich Zelter
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 month 1 week ago
When truth cannot make itself known...

When truth cannot make itself known in words, it will make itself known in deeds.

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Should he have spoken?, The New Criterion (September 2006), p. 22; also in The Roger Scruton Reader (2009) edited by Mark Dooley
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 days ago
If someone is....
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Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 1 week ago
For it all depends on how...

For it all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

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p. 67
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
3 months 1 week ago
Indulge in no wrathfulness, for a...

Indulge in no wrathfulness, for a man when he indulges in wrath becomes then forgetful of his duty and good works . . . and sin and crime of every kind occur unto his mind, and until the subsiding of the wrath he is said to be just like Ahareman.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 6 days ago
A man who has never been...

A man who has never been within the tropics does not know what a thunderstorm means; a man who has never looked on Niagara has but a faint idea of a cataract; and he who has not read Barère's Memoirs may be said not to know what it is to lie.

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Barère', The Edinburgh Review (April 1844), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. II (1860), p. 109
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 2 weeks ago
The utilitarian morality does recognise in...

The utilitarian morality does recognise in human beings the power of sacrificing their own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice which does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted. The only self-renunciation which it applauds, is devotion to the happiness, or to some of the means of happiness, of others; either of mankind collectively, or of individuals within the limits imposed by the collective interests of mankind.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is difficult…

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

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Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (1767): Troisième Entretien
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 1 week ago
The apparatus defeats its own purpose...

The apparatus defeats its own purpose if its purpose is to create a humane existence on the basis of a humanized nature.

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pp. 145-146
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
2 months 2 weeks ago
The art of writing books is...

The art of writing books is not yet invented. But it is at the point of being invented. Fragments of this nature are literary seeds. There may be many an infertile grain among them: nevertheless, if only some come up!

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Fragment No. 114
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
The whole plan of our order...

The whole plan of our order should be based on the idea of preparing men of firmness and virtue bound together by unity of conviction-aiming at the punishment of vice and folly, and patronizing talent and virtue: raising worthy men from the dust and attaching them to our Brotherhood. Only then will our order have the power unobtrusively to bind the hands of the protectors of disorder and to control them without their being aware of it. In a word, we must found a form of government holding universal sway, which should be diffused over the whole world without destroying the bonds of citizenship, and beside which all other governments can continue in their customary course and do everything except what impedes the great aim of our order, which is to obtain for virtue the victory over vice.

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Book VI, Chapter VII
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 month 1 week ago
The university, in a society ruled...

The university, in a society ruled by public opinion, was to have been an island of intellectual freedom where all views were investigated without restriction. ... But by consenting to play an active or "positive," a participatory role in society, the university has become inundated and saturated with the backflow of society's "problems." Preoccupied with questions of Health, Sex, Race, War, academics make their reputations and their fortunes. ... Any proposed reforms of liberal education which might bring the university into conflict with the whole of the U.S.A. are unthinkable. Increasingly, the people "inside" are identical in their appetites and motives with the people "outside" the university.

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p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1 week 3 days ago
In limitations he first shows himself...

In limitations he first shows himself the master,And the law can only bring us freedom.

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Was Wir Bringen
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
1 month ago
A life which does not go...

A life which does not go into action is a failure.

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Vol. 10
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
3 weeks 5 days ago
...it won't just be the quality...

...it won't just be the quality and quantity of consciousness in the world that will be transformed in the post-Darwinian Transition. As (post-)humanity emerges from the neurochemical Dark Ages, enriched dopaminergic function in particular may sharpen the sheer intensity and meaningfulness of every moment of conscious existence. For a generation whose lifetimes span both modes of awareness, it will be as if they had just woken up. They will feel they had hitherto been sleep-walking through life in a twilit stupor. Thereafter their former mundane and minimal existence may be recalled only as some kind of zombified trance-state whose nature they were physiologically incapable of recognising...

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The Hedonistic Imperative: Heaven on Earth?, "Eden", BLTC Research
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
2 months 3 days ago
Spirit is never an object; nor...

Spirit is never an object; nor a spiritual reality an objective one. In the so-called objective world there's no such nature, thing, or objective reality as spirit. Hence it is easy to deny the reality of spirit. God is spirit because he is not object, because he is subject.

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p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 2 weeks ago
When communist workmen associate with one...

When communist workmen associate with one another, theory, propaganda, etc., is their first end. But at the same time, as a result of this association, they acquire a new need - the need for society - and what appears as a means becomes an end. You can observe this practical processing its most splendid results whenever you see French socialist workers together. Such things as smoking, drinking, eating, etc., are no longer means of contact or means that bring together. Company, association, and conversation, which again has society as its end, are enough for them; the brotherhood of man is on mere phase with them, but a fact of life, and the nobility of man shines upon us from their work-hardened bodies.

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"The Meaning of Human Requirements" p.99-100,The Marx-Engels Reader
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 2 weeks ago
Man has an invincible inclination to...
Man has an invincible inclination to allow himself to be deceived and is, as it were, enchanted with happiness when the rhapsodist tells him epic fables as if they were true, or when the actor in the theater acts more royally than any real king. So long as it is able to deceive without injuring, that master of deception, the intellect, is free; it is released from its former slavery and celebrates its Saturnalia. It is never more luxuriant, richer, prouder, more clever and more daring.
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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 2 weeks ago
It seems to be my destiny...

It seems to be my destiny to discourse on truth, insofar as I discover it, in such a way that all possible authority is simultaneously demolished. Since I am incompetent and extremely undependable in men's eyes, I speak the truth and thereby place them in the contradiction from which they can be extricated only by appropriating the truth themselves. A man's personality is matured only when he appropriates the truth, whether it is spoken by Balaam's ass or a sniggering wag or an apostle or an angel.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 weeks ago
The only government that I recognize-and...

The only government that I recognize-and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army - is that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
Privacy invasion is now one of...

Privacy invasion is now one of biggest knowledge industries.

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(p. 24)
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 3 weeks ago
It is the natural effect of...

It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.

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Chapter XI, Part III, (Conclusion..) p. 282.
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
3 weeks ago
Though the framework is libertarian and...

Though the framework is libertarian and laissez-faire, individual communities within it need not be, and perhaps no community within it will choose to be so. Thus, the characteristics of the framework need not pervade the individual communities. In this laissez-faire system it could turn out that though they are permitted, there are no actually functioning "capitalist" institutions; or that some communities have them and others don't or some communities have some of them, or what you will.

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Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework as Utopian Common Ground, p. 320
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 1 day ago
To such a one, already filled...

To such a one, already filled with intellectual substance, and possessing what we may call the practical gold-bullion of human culture, it was an obvious improvement that he should be taught to speak it out of him on occasion; that he should carry a spiritual banknote producible on demand for what of "gold-bullion" he had, not so negotiable otherwise, stored in the cellars of his mind. A man, with wisdom, insight and heroic worth already acquired for him, naturally demanded of the schoolmaster this one new faculty, the faculty of uttering in fit words what he had. A valuable superaddition of faculty:-and yet we are to remember it was scarcely a new faculty; it was but the tangible sign of what other faculties the man had in the silent state.

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Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
1 week ago
[on Epicurus] His starting point is...

[on Epicurus] His starting point is a conviction that apathy is impossible, and that pleasure - though not necessarily sensual pleasure - is the only conceivable, and quite legitimate, end of life and action. "Nature leads every organism to prefer its own good to every other good" - even the stoic finds a subtle pleasure in renunciation. "We must not avoid pleasures, but we must select them". Epicurus, then, is no epicurean, he exalts the joys of intellect rather than those of sense; he warns against pleasures that excite and disturb the soul which they should rather quite and appease. In the end he proposes to seek not pleasure in its usual sense, but ataraxia - tranquility, equaninimity, repose of mind; all of which trembles on the verge of Zeno's "Apathy"

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 1 week ago
By the ruler's cultivation of his...

By the ruler's cultivation of his own character, the duties of universal obligation are set forth. By honoring men of virtue and talents, he is preserved from errors of judgment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
In skating over thin ice our...

In skating over thin ice our safety is our speed.

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Prudence
Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
1 month 3 weeks ago
We're tired of trees…

We're tired of trees. We should stop believing in trees, roots, and radicles. They've made us suffer too much. All of arborescent culture is founded on them, from biology to linguistics. Nothing is beautiful or loving or political aside from underground stems and aerial root, adventitious growths and rhizomes.

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from A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 3 weeks ago
The foremost, or indeed the sole...

The foremost, or indeed the sole condition which is required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community, is to love equality, or to get men to believe you love it. Thus the science of despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced as it were to a single principle.

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Book Four, Chapter IV.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
Next to the originator of a...

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.

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Quotation and Originality
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
3 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
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 2 weeks ago
Life is short, but its ills...

Life is short, but its ills make it seem long.

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Maxim 124
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 2 weeks ago
A cock has great….

A cock has great influence on his own dunghill.

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Maxim 357
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 3 weeks ago
They all attributed the peaceful dominion...

They all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point.

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Chapter XVII.
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
3 days ago
If man puts his honor first...

If man puts his honor first in relying upon himself, knowing himself and applying himself, this in self-reliance, self-assertion, and freedom, he then strives to rid himself of the ignorance which makes a strange impenetrable object a barrier and a hindrance to his self-knowledge.

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p. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 months 3 days ago
The concept of positivity in itself,...

The concept of positivity in itself, in abstracto, has become part and parcel of the ideology today. ... Critique has started to become suspect, regardless of its content.

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p. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
Gentlemen, there is a sublime and...

Gentlemen, there is a sublime and friendly Destiny by which the human race is guided, - the race never dying, the individual never spared, - to results affecting masses and ages. Men are narrow and selfish, but the Genius or Destiny is not narrow, but beneficent. It is not discovered in their calculated and voluntary activity, but in what befalls, with or without their design. Only what is inevitable interests us, and it turns out that love and good are inevitable, and in the course of things. That Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 3 days ago
An unjust law is no law...

An unjust law is no law at all.

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On Free Choice Of The Will, Book 1, and 5
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
2 months 1 week ago
Beyond all conscious lying and falsifying,...

Beyond all conscious lying and falsifying, there is a deeper "organic mendacity." Here the falsification is not formed in consciousness, but at the same stage of the mental process as the impressions and value feelings themselves: on the road of experience into consciousness. There is "organic mendacity" whenever a man's mind admits only those impressions which serve his "interest" or his instinctive attitude. Already in the process of mental reproduction and recollection, the contents of his experience are modified in this direction. He who is "mendacious" has no need to lie! In his case, the automatic process of forming recollections, impressions, and feelings is involuntarily slanted, so that conscious falsification becomes unnecessary.

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L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 77-78
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 3 weeks ago
With prophecies the commentator is often...

With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.

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H 23
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
4 months 2 weeks ago
And the true order of going,...

And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 3 weeks ago
Our stubbornness is right, because we...

Our stubbornness is right, because we want to preserve the liberty which we have in Christ. Only by preserving our liberty shall we be able to retain the truth of the Gospel inviolate.

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Chapter 2
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
3 days ago
An appeal to men's self-sacrificing disposition...

An appeal to men's self-sacrificing disposition and self-renouncing love ought at least to have lost its seductive plausibility when, after an activity of thousands of years, it has left nothing behind but the - misery of today. Why then still fruitlessly expect self-sacrifice to bring us better times? Why not rather hope for them from usurpation? Salvation comes no longer from the giver, the bestower, the loving one, but from the taker, the appropriator (usurper), the owner. Communism, and, consciously, egoism-reviling humanism, still count on love.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 274
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 3 weeks ago
The New Englander is attached to...

The New Englander is attached to his township because it is strong and independent; he has an interest in it because he shares in its management; he loves it because he has no reason to complain of his lot; he invests his ambition and his future in it; in the restricted sphere within his scope, he learns to rule society; he gets to know those formalities without which freedom can advance only through revolutions, and becoming imbued with their spirit, develops a taste for order, understands the harmony of powers, and in the end accumulates clear, practical ideas about the nature of his duties and the extent of his rights.

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Chapter V.
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 2 weeks ago
To understand oneself in existence is...

To understand oneself in existence is the Christian principle, except that this self has received much richer and much more profound qualifications that are even more difficult to understand together with existing. The believer is a subjective thinker, and the difference, is only between the simple person and the simple wise person. Here again the oneself is not humanity in general, subjectivity in general, and other such things, whereas everything becomes easy inasmuch as the difficulty is removed and the whole matter is shifted over into the shadow play of abstraction.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 1 week ago
There is hardly a philosophy which...

There is hardly a philosophy which has not invoked something like the will or desire to know, the love of truth, etcetera. But, in truth, very few philosophers-apart, perhaps, from Spinoza and Schopenhauer-have accorded it more than a marginal status; as if there was no need for philosophy to say first of all what the name that it bears actually refers to. As if placing at the head of its discourse the desire to know, which it repeats in its name, was enough to justify its own existence and show-at a stroke-that it is necessary and natural: All men desire to know. Who, then, is not a philosopher, and how could philosophy not be the most necessary thing in the world?

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pp. 4-5
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 weeks ago
There is no belief, however foolish,...

There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 2 weeks ago
The first intellectual operation in which...

The first intellectual operation in which I arrived at any proficiency, was dissecting a bad argument, and finding in what part the fallacy lay: and though whatever capacity of this sort I attained was due to the fact that it was an intellectual exercise in which I was most perseveringly drilled by my father, yet it is also true that the school logic, and the mental habits acquired in studying it, were among the principal instruments of this drilling. I am persuaded that nothing, in modern education, tends so much, when properly used, to form exact thinkers, who attach a precise meaning to words and propositions, and are not imposed on by vague, loose, or ambiguous terms. The boasted influence of mathematical studies is nothing to it; for in mathematical processes, none of the real difficulties of correct ratiocination occur.

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(p. 19)
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 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
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 weeks ago
Self-preservation has frequently knuckled under to...

Self-preservation has frequently knuckled under to that tremendous yearning to get even.

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Philosophical Maxims
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