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Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
Laws, like houses, lean on one...

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

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From the Tracts Relative to the Laws Against Popery in Ireland (c. 1766), not published during Burke's lifetime.
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 weeks 4 days ago
The Catholic solution of our problem,...

The Catholic solution of our problem, of our unique vital problem, the problem of the immortality and eternal salvation of the soul, satisfies the will, and therefore satisfies life; but the attempt to rationalize it by means of a dogmatic theology fails to satisfy the reason. And reason has its exigencies as imperious as those of life. It is no use seeking to force ourselves to consider as super-rational what clearly appears to us to be contra-rational... Infallibility, a notion of Hellenic origin, is in its essence a rationalistic category.

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Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
3 weeks 4 days ago
A man should be mourned at...

A man should be mourned at his birth, not at his death.

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No. 40. (Usbek writing to Ibben)
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 4 days 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
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 day ago
There is simply too much to...

There is simply too much to think about. It is hopeless - too many kinds of special preparation are required. In electronics, in economics, in social analysis, in history, in psychology, in international politics, most of us are, given the oceanic proliferating complexity of things, paralyzed by the very suggestion that we assume responsibility for so much. This is what makes packaged opinion so attractive.

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There Is Simply Too Much to Think About (1992), pp. 173-174
Philosophical Maxims
George Berkeley
George Berkeley
1 month 2 weeks ago
Truth is the cry of all,...

Truth is the cry of all, but the game of the few.

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Paragraph 368
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
Keep the faculty of effort alive...

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 1 day ago
The operations of understanding thus divide...

The operations of understanding thus divide the world into numberless polarities, and Hegel uses the expression 'isolated reflection' (isolierte Reflection) to characterize the manner in which understanding forms and connects its polar concepts. The rise and spread of this kind of thinking Hegel connects with the origin and prevalence of crucial relationships in human life. The antagonisms of 'isolated reflections' express real antagonisms. .... Isolation and opposition are not, however, the final state of affairs. The world must not remain a complex of fixed disparates. The unity that underlies the antagonisms must be grasped and realized by reason, which has the task of reconciling the opposites and 'sublimating' them in a true unity.

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P. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
2 weeks 3 days ago
Since my world picture approximates reality...

Since my world picture approximates reality only crudely, I cannot aspire to optimize anything; at most, I can aim at satisficing. Searching for the best can only dissipate scarce cognitive resources; the best is the enemy of the good.

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(p.361) p. 361; As cited in Ronald J. Baker (2010) Implementing Value Pricing: A Revolutionary Business Model for Professional Firms. p. 122.
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 1 week ago
The worst readers are those who...
The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 2 weeks ago
We vainly accuse the fury of...

We vainly accuse the fury of guns, and the new inventions of death; it is in the power of every hand to destroy us, and we are beholden unto every one we meet he doth not kill us.

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Section 44
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 month 6 days ago
Sleep is for the inhabitants of...

Sleep is for the inhabitants of Planets only. In another time, Man will sleep and wake continually at once. The greater part of our Body, of our Humanity itself, yet sleeps a deep sleep.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 4 days ago
We must plow through the whole...

We must plow through the whole of language.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 131
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 6 days ago
It is my own experience ......

It is my own experience ... that commentators are far more ingenious at finding meaning than authors are at inserting it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 days ago
Let us speak plainly: everything which...

Let us speak plainly: everything which keeps us from self-dissolution, every lie which protects us against our unbreathable certitudes is religious.

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Philosophical Maxims
Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
1 month 2 weeks ago
A grievous crime indeed against religion...

A grievous crime indeed against religion has been committed by the man who imagines that Islam is defended by the denial of the mathematical sciences.

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III. The Classes of Seekers, p. 23.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
Do not be too moral...
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Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 1 week ago
In the United States of North...

In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.

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Vol. I, Ch. 10, Section 7, pg. 329.
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 1 week ago
What, in unenlightened societies, colour, race,...

What, in unenlightened societies, colour, race, religion, or in the case of a conquered country, nationality, are to some men, sex is to all women; a peremptory exclusion from almost all honourable occupations, but either such as cannot be fulfilled by others, or such as those others do not think worthy of their acceptance.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
My Lords, to obtain empire is...

My Lords, to obtain empire is common; to govern it well has been rare indeed. To chastise the guilt of those who have been instruments of imperial sway over other nations by the high superintending justice of the sovereign state has not many striking examples among any people.

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Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (16 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Ninth (1899), p. 398
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 days ago
The world begins and ends with...

The world begins and ends with us. Only our consciousness exists, it is everything, and this everything vanishes with it. Dying, we leave nothing. Then why so much fuss around an event that is no such thing?

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 week 1 day ago
Three days later the little princess...

Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrei went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes. "Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to say, and Prince Andrei felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget.

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Bk. IV, Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 1 week ago
A young man before he leaves...

A young man before he leaves the shelter of his father's house, and the guard of a tutor, should be fortify'd with resolution, and made acquainted with men, to secure his virtues, lest he should be led into some ruinous course, or fatal precipice, before he is sufficiently acquainted with the dangers of conversation, and his steadiness enough not to yield to every temptation.

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Sec. 70
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 3 weeks ago
What is the use of believing,...

What is the use of believing, if the dost blaspheme? Thou adorest Him as Head, and dost blaspheme Him in His body. He loves His body. Thou canst cut thyself off from the body, but the Head does not detach itself from its body. "Thou dost honor me in vain," He cries from heaven, "thou dost honor Me in vain!" If someone wished to kiss thy cheek, but insisted at the same time on trampling thy feet; if with his hailed boots he were to crush thy feet as he tries to hold thy head and kiss thee, wouldst thou not interrupt his expression of respect and cry out: "What are thou doing, man? Thou art trampling upon me!" It is for this reason that before He ascended into heaven our Lord Jesus Christ recommended to us His body, by which He was to remain upon earth. For He foresaw that many would pay Him homage because of His glory in heaven, but that their homage would be vain, so long as they despise His members on earth.

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(pp. 436-437)
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 weeks ago
God functions like a stabilizer of...

God functions like a stabilizer of time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 4 days ago
A serious and good philosophical work...

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

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As quoted in "A View from the Asylum" in Philosophical Investigations from the Sanctity of the Press (2004), by Henry Dribble, p. 87
Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
2 months 3 weeks ago
"Do not blame Caesar, blame the...

Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome, interpreted to mean 'more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.

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This is also from the 1965 essay by Justice Millard Caldwell. It is not clear if this is based in any specific dialogue.
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
1 month ago
Only lies and evil come from...

Only lies and evil come from letting people off.

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A Severed Head (1961); 1976, p. 61.
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 weeks ago
The liturgy of emptiness dispels the...

The liturgy of emptiness dispels the capitalist economy of the commodity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
I considerd a general War against...

I considerd a general War against Jacobins and Jacobinism, as the only possible chance of saving Europe, (and England as included in Europe) from a truly frightful revolution. ... It is my Protest against the delusion, by which some have been taught to look upon this Jacobin contest at home as an ordinary party squabble about place or Patronage; and to regard this Jacobin War abroad as a common War about Trade, or Territorial Boundaries, or about a political Balance of power among Rival or jealous States.

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Letter to the Duke of Portland (29 September 1793), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.)
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 1 week ago
Opinions have caused….

Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.

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Letter to Élie Bertrand, 5 January 1759
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
4 weeks 1 day ago
The hypostasis of the particular methods...

The hypostasis of the particular methods of procedure employed by natural science ... results in the view that all theoretical differences which rest on historically conditioned antagonisms of interest are to be settles by a "crucial experiment" rather than by struggle and counter-struggle. The harmonious relation of individuals to one another becomes a fact, therefore, that has even more general character than a law of nature.

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p. 148.
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 5 days ago
Aion is a child at play,...

Aion is a child at play, gambling; a child's is the kingship. Telesphorus traverses the dark places of the world, like a star flashing from the deep, leading the way to the gates of the sun and the land of dreams.

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Combining fragments of Heraclitus and Homer
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
2 months 3 weeks ago
The essence of the good is...

The essence of the good is a certain kind of moral purpose, and that of the evil is a certain kind of moral purpose.

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Book I, ch. 29, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 1 week ago
The religious world is but the...

The religious world is but the reflex of the real world.

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Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 4, pg. 91.
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
1 month 4 weeks ago
This to the right….

This to the right, that to the left hand strays, and all are wrong, but wrong in different ways.

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Book II, satire iii, line 50 (trans. Conington)
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
1 week 4 days ago
We often attribute "understanding" and other...

We often attribute "understanding" and other cognitive predicates by metaphor and analogy to cars, adding machines, and other artifacts, but nothing is proved by such attributions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 2 weeks ago
As long as Man continues to...

As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.

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Attribution to Pythagoras by Ovid, as quoted in The Extended Circle: A Dictionary of Humane Thought (1985) by Jon Wynne-Tyson, p. 260; also in Vegetarian Times, No. 168 (August 1991), p. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is then unnecessary to investigate...

It is then unnecessary to investigate whether there be beyond the heaven Space, Void or Time. For there is a single general space, a single vast immensity which we may freely call Void; in it are innumerable globes like this one on which we live and grow. This space we declare to be infinite, since neither reason, convenience, possibility, sense-perception nor nature assign to it a limit. In it are an infinity of worlds of the same kind as our own.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
6 days ago
The only cool PR is provided...

The only cool PR is provided by one's enemies. They toil incessantly and for free.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 1 day ago
Hegel's philosophy revolved about the universality...

Hegel's philosophy revolved about the universality of reason; it was a rational system with its every part (the subjective as well as the objective spheres) integrated into a comprehensive whole. Marx shows that capitalist society first put such a universality into practice.

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P. 286-287
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 week ago
This bird sees the white man...

This bird sees the white man come and the Indian withdraw, but it withdraws not. Its untamed voice is still heard above the tinkling of the forge... It remains to remind us of aboriginal nature.

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March 23, 1856; of the crow
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 days ago
They would receive the same care...

They would receive the same care and attention as those who belong to the establishment. Nor will there be any distinction made between the children of those parents who are deemed the worst, and of those who may be esteemed the best members of society: indeed I would prefer to receive the offspring of the worst, if they shall be sent at an early age; because they really require more of our care and pity and by well-training these, society will be more essentially benefited than if the like attention were paid to those whose parents are educating them in comparatively good habits. On educating children of the poor, and of neighboring communities.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
Since Adam and Eve ate the...

Since Adam and Eve ate the apple, man has never refrained from any folly of which he was capable. The End.

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Full text of Russell's book History of the World in Epitome , written in 1959
Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
3 weeks ago
The intellectual's spirit as an amateur...

The intellectual's spirit as an amateur can enter and transform the merely professional routine most of us go through into something much more lively and radical; instead of doing what one is supposed to do one can ask why one does it, who benefits from it, how can it reconnect with a personal project and original thoughts.

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p. 83
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 weeks ago
Today, to live means merely to...

Today, to live means merely to produce.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 1 week ago
To one unnamed, whose name will...

To one unnamed, whose name will one day be named, is dedicated, with this little work, the entire authorship, as it was from the beginning.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 1 week ago
Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge gained...

Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from concepts; mathematical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from the construction of concepts.

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A 713, B 741
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 5 days ago
One does not discover the absurd...

One does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual of happiness. "What! — by such narrow ways — ?" There is but one world, however. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 1 week ago
In such a chain, too, or...

In such a chain, too, or succession of objects, each part is caused by that which preceded it, and causes that which succeeds it. Where then is the difficulty? But the WHOLE, you say, wants a cause. I answer, that the uniting of these parts into a whole, like the uniting of several distinct countries into one kingdom, or several distinct members into one body, is performed merely by an arbitrary act of the mind, and has no influence on the nature of things. Did I show you the particular causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter, I should think it very unreasonable, should you afterwards ask me, what was the cause of the whole twenty. This is sufficiently explained in explaining the cause of the parts.

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Cleanthes to Demea, Part IX
Philosophical Maxims
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