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Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 3 weeks ago
By the removal of the unnecessary...

By the removal of the unnecessary mouths, and by extracting from the farmer the full value of the farm, a greater surplus, or what is the same thing, the price of a greater surplus, was obtained for the proprietor...

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Chapter IV, p. 450 (On Highland Clearances).
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
I believe that the abolition of...

I believe that the abolition of private ownership of land and capital is a necessary step toward any world in which the nations are to live at peace with one another.

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Ch. VI: International relations, p. 99
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 3 weeks ago
I have received, sir, your new...

I have received, sir, your new book against the human species, and I thank you for it. You will please people by your manner of telling them the truth about themselves, but you will not alter them. The horrors of that human society-from which in our feebleness and ignorance we expect so many consolations-have never been painted in more striking colours: no one has ever been so witty as you are in trying to turn us into brutes: to read your book makes one long to go on all fours. Since, however, it is now some sixty years since I gave up the practice, I feel that it is unfortunately impossible for me to resume it: I leave this natural habit to those more fit for it than are you and I.

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Letter to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, August 30, 1755 referring to Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality.
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 week ago
Once the needs of hunger are...

Once the needs of hunger are satisfied - and they are soon satisfied - the vanity, the necessity - for it is a necessity - arises of imposing ourselves upon and surviving in others. Man habitually sacrifices his life to his purse, but he sacrifices his purse to his vanity. He boasts even of his weakness and his misfortunes, for want of anything better to boast of, and is like a child who, in order to attract attention, struts about with a bandaged finger.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 2 weeks ago
A finite interval of time generally...

A finite interval of time generally contains an innumerable series of feelings; and when these become welded together in association the result is a general idea.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 5 days ago
Regardless of the present trend toward...

Regardless of the present trend toward the strong-armed man, the totalitarian states, or the dictatorship from the left, my ideas have remained unshaken. In fact, they have been strengthened by my personal experience and the world events through the years. I see no reason to change, as I do not believe that the tendency of dictatorship can ever successfully solve our social problems. As in the past, so I do now insist that freedom is the soul of progress and essential to every phase of life. I consider this as near a law of social evolution as anything we can postulate. My faith is in the individual and in the capacity of free individuals for united endeavor.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 6 days ago
Another theme of the Wake that...

Another theme of the Wake that helps in the understanding of the paradoxical shift from cliché to archetype is "pastimes are past times". The dominant technologies of one age become the games and pastimes of a later age. In the twentieth century the number of past times that are simultaneously available is so vast as to create cultural anarchy. When all the cultures of the world are simultaneously present, the work of the artist in the elucidation of form takes on new scope and new urgency. Most men are pushed into the artist role. The artist cannot dispense with the principle of doubleness and interplay since this kind of hendiadys-dialogue is essential to the very structure of consciousness, awareness, and autonomy.

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(p.99)
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 6 days ago
The "tragic flaw" is not a...

The "tragic flaw" is not a detail of characterization, a mere "fly in the ointment", but a structural feature of ordinary consciousness.

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(p.45)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
For the prevision is allied Unto...

For the prevision is allied Unto the thing so signified; Or say, the foresight that awaits Is the same Genius that creates.

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Fate
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 3 weeks ago
If pains be to be taken...

If pains be to be taken to give him a manly air and assurance betimes, it is chiefly as a fence to his virtue when he goes into the world under his own conduct.

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Sec. 70
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 6 days ago
The press is a group confessional...

The press is a group confessional form that provides communal participation. The book is a private confessional form that provides a "point of view."

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(p. 204)
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
The community has no bribe that...

The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. You may raise money enough to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business. An efficient and valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder, and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose that they were rarely disappointed.

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p. 486
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 2 weeks ago
The office of the sovereign, be...

The office of the sovereign, be it a monarch or an assembly, consisteth in the end for which he was trusted with the sovereign power, namely the procuration of the safety of the people, to which he is obliged by the law of nature, and to render an account thereof to God, the Author of that law, and to none but Him. But by safety here is not meant a bare preservation, but also all other contentments of life, which every man by lawful industry, without danger or hurt to the Commonwealth, shall acquire to himself. And this is intended should be done, not by care applied to individuals, further than their protection from injuries when they shall complain; but by a general providence, contained in public instruction, both of doctrine and example; and in the making and executing of good laws to which individual persons may apply their own cases.

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The Second Part, Chapter 30: Of the Office of the Sovereign Representative
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
2 months 1 week ago
Lamachus chid a captain for a...

Lamachus chid a captain for a fault; and when he had said he would do so no more, "Sir," said he, "in war there is no room for a second miscarriage." Said one to Iphicrates, "What are ye afraid of?" "Of all speeches," said he, "none is so dishonourable for a general as 'I should not have thought of it.'"

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52 Iphicrates
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
2 months 3 weeks ago
The Few assume to be the...

The Few assume to be the deputies, but they are often only the despoilers of the Many.

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Pt. IV, sec. 3, ch. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
I cannot conceive how any man...

I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.

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Volume iii, p. 231
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
The obsession with suicide is characteristic...

The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 6 days ago
The nuclear bomb will turn warfare...

The nuclear bomb will turn warfare into the juggling of images.

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(p. 360)
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 1 week ago
Cantare amantis est. Singing is of...

Singing is of a lover.

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Variant translation: To sing is characteristic of the lover. 336
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
1 month 3 weeks ago
In England ... everything becomes professional...

In England ... everything becomes professional ... even the rogues of that island are pedants.

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"Selected Aphorisms from the Lyceum (1797)"
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 day ago
If you are...
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Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 2 weeks ago
The contradiction is this: man rejects...

The contradiction is this: man rejects the world as it is, without accepting the necessity of escaping it. In fact, men cling to the world and by far the majority do not want to abandon it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 1 week ago
Let hopes and sorrows….

Let hopes and sorrows, fears and angers be, and think each day that dawns the last you'll see; For so the hour that greets you unforeseen, will bring with it enjoyment twice as keen.

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Book I, epistle iv, line 12 (translated by John Conington)
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 1 week ago
Once for all, then, a short...

Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, through love do thou spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good.

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Tractatus VII, 8 Latin: "dilige et quod vis fac."; falsely often: "ama et fac quod vis." Translation by Professor Joseph Fletcher: Love and then what you will, do.
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
3 months ago
In judging policies we should consider...

In judging policies we should consider the results that have been achieved through them rather than the means by which they have been executed.

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From an undated letter to Piero Soderini (translated here by Dr. Arthur Livingston), in The Living Thoughts of Machiavelli, by Count Carlo Sforza, published by Cassell, London (1942), p. 85
Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
1 month 1 week ago
Statistically, myth is on the right....

Statistically, myth is on the right. There, it is essential, well-fed, sleek, expensive, garrulous, it invents itself ceaselessly. It takes hold of everything, all aspects of the law, of morality, of aesthetics, of diplomacy, of household equipment, of Literature, of entertainment.

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p. 148
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 5 days ago
In fact, we had a number...

In fact, we had a number of extreme leftists and trade unionists among us, and they seemed to take it for granted that we all agreed that the rich must somehow be forced to surrender their ill-gotten gains. Yet there was an air of good humor about their idealism that made me feel they would not be too offended if I admitted that I regard socialists as well-meaning but muddle-headed brigands.

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p. 30
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 3 weeks ago
Lord, you have cursed Cain and...

Lord, you have cursed Cain and Cain's children: thy will be done. You have allowed men's hearts to be corrupted, that their intentions be rotten, that their actions putrefy and stink: thy will be done.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 2 days ago
Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to...

Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient. ... To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.

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A 38
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months ago
The Law continues to exist and...

The Law continues to exist and to function. But it no longer exists for me.

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Chapter 2, Verse 19
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 2 weeks ago
For those of us who have...

For those of us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 week ago
And what is its moral proof?...

And what is its moral proof? We may formulate it thus: Act so that in your own judgment and in the judgment of others you may merit eternity, act so that you may become irreplaceable, act so that you may not merit death. Or perhaps thus: Act as if you were to die tomorrow, but to die in order to survive and be eternalized. The end of morality is to give personal, human finality to the Universe; to discover the finality that belongs to it - if indeed it has any finality - and to discover it by acting.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
The youth gets together his materials...

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

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July 14, 1852
Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
1 month 1 week ago
Myth is depoliticized speech. p. 145

Myth is depoliticized speech.

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p. 145
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
2 months 1 week ago
Being nimble and light-footed, his father...

Being nimble and light-footed, his father encouraged him to run in the Olympic race. "Yes," said he, "if there were any kings there to run with me."

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41 Alexander
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 3 weeks ago
Granted I am a babbler, a...

Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?

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Part 1, Chapter 5
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
Men tend to have the beliefs...

Men tend to have the beliefs that suit their passions. Cruel men believe in a cruel God, and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly God, and they would be kindly in any case.

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In London Calling (1947), p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is the dissimilarities and inequalities...

It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.

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Book Three, Chapter XVIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 week ago
Apart from the fact there is...

Apart from the fact there is no normal standard of health, nobody has proved that man is necessarily cheerful by nature. And further, man, by the very fact of being man, of possessing consciousness, is, in comparison with the ass or the crab, a diseased animal. Consciousness is a disease.

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Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
2 months 1 week ago
He once begged alms of a...

He once begged alms of a statue, and, when asked why he did so, replied, "To get practice in being refused."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 49
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
I think modern educational theorists are...

I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attach too much importance to the negative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little to the positive merit of enjoying their company.

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Ch. 12: Education and Discipline
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 3 weeks ago
A plant, an animal, the regular...

A plant, an animal, the regular order of nature - probably also the disposition of the whole universe - give manifest evidence that they are possible only by means of and according to ideas; that, indeed, no one creature, under the individual conditions of its existence, perfectly harmonizes with the idea of the most perfect of its kind - just as little as man with the idea of humanity, which nevertheless he bears in his soul as the archetypal standard of his actions; that, notwithstanding, these ideas are in the highest sense individually, unchangeably, and completely determined, and are the original causes of things; and that the totality of connected objects in the universe is alone fully adequate to that idea.

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B 374
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
"Meeting, after several years, someone we...

"Meeting, after several years, someone we used to know as a child, the first glance almost always suggests that some great disaster must have befallen him" Leopardi, quoted by cioran.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
When I found myself regarded as...

When I found myself regarded as respectable, I began to wonder what sins I had committed. I must be very wicked, I thought. I began to engage in the most uncomfortable introspection. Interview with Irwin Ross, September 1957;If there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence.

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Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell (2005), p. 385
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 2 weeks ago
Let us not pretend to doubt...

Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.

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Vol. V, par. 265
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
3 weeks 5 days ago
It seems to me, that if...

It seems to me, that if the matter of our sun and planets and all the matter of the universe, were evenly scattered throughout all the heavens, and every particle had an innate gravity towards all the rest, and the whole of space throughout which this matter was scattered was but finite, the matter on [toward] the outside of this space would, by its gravity, tend towards all the matter on the inside, and, by consequence, fall down into the middle of the whole space, and there compose one great spherical mass. But if the matter was evenly disposed throughout an infinite space it could never convene into one mass; but some of it would convene into one mass and some into another, so as to make an infinite number of great masses, scattered at great distances from one another throughout all that infinite space.

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Four Letters to Bentley (1692) first letter
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
People must be governed in a...

People must be governed in a manner agreeable to their temper and disposition; and men of free character and spirit must be ruled with, at least, some condescension to this spirit and this character.

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Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769), page 76.
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 3 weeks ago
On doit exiger de moi que...

On doit exiger de moi que je cherche la vérité, mais non que je la trouve. One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it.

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No. 29
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 3 weeks ago
On the other hand one must...

On the other hand one must not entertain any fantastic illusions on the productive power of the credit system, so far as it supplies or sets in motion money-capital.

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Vol. II, Ch. XVII, p. 351.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
When we know what words are...

When we know what words are worth, the amazing thing is that we try to say anything at all, and that we manage to do so. This requires, it is true, a supernatural nerve.

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Philosophical Maxims
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