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comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 day ago
Force without wisdom...
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Main Content / General
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 6 days ago
I now myself live, in every...
I now myself live, in every detail, striving for wisdom, while I formerly merely worshipped and idolized the wise.
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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 3 days ago
To see ourselves as others see...

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.

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Page 159
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
2 months 4 weeks ago
For anyone who at the end...

For anyone who at the end of Western philosophy can and must still question philosophically, the decisive question is no longer merely "What basic character do beings manifest?" or "How may the being of beings be characterized?" but "What is this 'being' itself?" The decisive question is that of "the meaning of being," not merely that of the being of beings.

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p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months ago
We are living in what the...

We are living in what the Greeks called the right time for a "metamorphosis of the gods," i.e. of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science.

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p 110
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 weeks ago
The desire to die was my...

The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 week ago
No protracted war can fail to...

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.

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Book Three, Chapter XXII.
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 3 weeks ago
Life cannot wait until the sciences...

Life cannot wait until the sciences may have explained the universe scientifically. We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, "here and now" without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank. And culture, which is but its interpretation, cannot wait any more than can life itself.

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Mission of the University [Misión de la Universidad (PDF)] (1930; translation © 1944, first published 1946), p. 73 [p. 15 in Spanish PDF], translated by Howard Lee Nostrand. ISBN 978-1-56000-560-5
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
For my own part, I cannot...

For my own part, I cannot without grief see so much as an innocent beast pursued and killed that has no defence, and from which we have received no offence at all.

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Ch. 11, tr. Cotton, 1685
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 3 days ago
A man who has trained himself...

A man who has trained himself in goodness come to have certain direct intuitions about character, about the relations between human beings, about his own position in the world - intuitions that are quite different from the intuitions of the average sensual man.

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Ch. 14, p. 333 [2012 reprint]
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
3 weeks 5 days 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
Plato
Plato
4 months 1 day ago
If anyone, with his mind...

Parmenides: If anyone, with his mind fixed on all these objections and others like them, denies the existence of ideas of things, and does not assume an idea under which each individual thing is classed, he will be quite at a loss, since he denies that the idea of each thing is always the same, and in this way he will utterly destroy the power of carrying on discussion... Then what will become of philosophy? To what can you turn, if these things are unknown?

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 days ago
A good symbol is the best...

A good symbol is the best argument and is a missionary to persuade thousands.

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Poetry and Imagination
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 4 days 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
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
1 week ago
From each as they choose, to...

From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen.

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Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, Patterning, p. 160
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 6 days ago
The venerability, reliability, and utility of...
The venerability, reliability, and utility of truth is something which a person demonstrates for himself from the contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and everyone excludes. As a "rational" being, he now places his behavior under the control of abstractions. He will no longer tolerate being carried away by sudden impressions, by intuitions.
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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 4 days ago
It is so rare to meet...

It is so rare to meet with a man out-doors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 3 days ago
The survival of democracy depends on...

The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information.

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Chapter 6 (p. 47)
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
2 months 4 weeks ago
The blues is relevant today because...

The blues is relevant today because when we look down through the corridors of time, the black American interpretation of tragicomic hope in the face of dehumanizing hate and oppression will be seen as the only kind of hope that has any kind of maturity in a world of overwhelming barbarity and bestiality. That barbarity is found not just in the form of terrorism but in the form of the emptiness of our lives - in terms of the wasted human potential that we see around the world. In this sense, the blues is a great democratic contribution of black people to world history.

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(p20)
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 3 days ago
When a person inflates his own...

When a person inflates his own importance, he does not see his own sins; and his sins get bigger right along with him.

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p. 108
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 1 week ago
If you are going to build...

If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.

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F 39
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 2 weeks ago
There is nothing truly real, save...

There is nothing truly real, save that which feels, suffers, pities, loves and desires, save consciousness. And we need God in order to save consciousness; not in order to think existence, but in order to live it; not in order to know the why and how of it, but in order to feel the wherefore of it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
3 months 2 days ago
Kant stated defensively that he had...

Kant stated defensively that he had "found it necessary to deny knowledge. . . to make room for faith," but he had not made room for faith; he had made room for thought, and he had not "denied knowledge" but separated knowledge from thinking.

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p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 2 weeks ago
And thus the soul pities God...

And thus the soul pities God and feels itself pitied by him; loves Him and feels loved by Him, sheltering its misery in the bosom of the eternal and infinite misery, which, in eternalizing itself and infinitizing itself, is the supreme happiness itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
1 month 1 week ago
A few years ago I had...

A few years ago I had occasion to visit Peru, and I got to know a fine philosopher and a truly wonderful human being-Francisco Miro Casada. Miro Casada has been an idealist all his life, while being, at the same time, a man of great experience (a former member of several governments and a former Ambassador to France). I found him a man who represents the social democratic vision in its purest form. Talking to him, and to my other friends in Peru (who represented quite a spectrum of political opinion), I heard something that was summed up in a remark he, Miro Casada, made to me, "Whenever you have a Republican president, we get a wave of military dictatorships in Latin America".

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How Not to Solve Ethical Problems
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 2 weeks ago
And killing time is perhaps the...

And killing time is perhaps the essence of comedy, just as the essence of tragedy is killing eternity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 6 days ago
I freely admit that the remembrance...

I freely admit that the remembrance of David Hume was the very thing that many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave a completely different direction to my researches in the field of speculative philosophy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 4 days ago
How vain it is to sit...

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

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August 19, 1851
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 1 day ago
The most exciting phrase to hear...

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny ...'

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
3 months 3 weeks ago
The highest manifestation...

The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A being that is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing. Variant translation: Now slavery has a certain likeness to death, hence it is also called civil death. For life is most evident in a thing's moving itself, while what can only be moved by another, seems to be as if dead. But it is manifest that a slave is not moved by himself, but only at his master's command.

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Chapter 14
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
1 month 1 week ago
If there were no limits to...

If there were no limits to human rationality administrative theory would be barren. It would consist of the single precept: Always select that alternative, among those available, which will lead to the most complete achievement of your goals.

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Simon (1945, p. 240); As cited in:
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 days ago
What is there in 'Paradise Lost'...

What is there in 'Paradise Lost' to elevate and astonish like Herschel or Somerville?

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Quoted in Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Emerson, the Mind On Fire (Univ. of Calif Press 1995), p. 124
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
3 weeks 5 days ago
National loyalty involves a love of...

National loyalty involves a love of home and a preparedness to defend it; nationalism is a belligerent ideology, which uses national symbols in order to conscript the people to war.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 4 days ago
In obedience to the feeling of...

In obedience to the feeling of reality, we shall insist that, in the analysis of propositions, nothing "unreal" is to be admitted. But, after all, if there is nothing unreal, how, it may be asked, could we admit anything unreal? The reply is that, in dealing with propositions, we are dealing in the first instance with symbols, and if we attribute significance to groups of symbols which have no significance, we shall fall into the error of admitting unrealities, in the only sense in which this is possible, namely, as objects described.

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Ch. 16: Descriptions
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 4 days ago
Some part of life - perhaps...

Some part of life - perhaps the most important part - must be left to the spontaneous action of individual impulse, for where all is system there will be mental and spiritual death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 4 days ago
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong,...

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Education is an ornament for the...

Education is an ornament for the prosperous, a refuge for the unfortunate.

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Freeman (1948), p. 161
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 1 week ago
Morality is a subject that interests...

Morality is a subject that interests us above all others: We fancy the peace of society to be at stake in every decision concerning it; and 'tis evident, that this concern must make our speculations appear more real and solid, than where the subject is, in a great measure, indifferent to us. What affects us, we conclude can never be a chimera; and as our passion is engag'd on the one side or the other, we naturally think that the question lies within human comprehension; which, in other cases of this nature, we are apt to entertain some doubt of. Without this advantage I never should have ventur'd upon a third volume of such abstruse philosophy, in an age, wherein the greatest part of men seem agreed to convert reading into an amusement, and to reject every thing that requires any considerable degree of attention to be comprehended.

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Part 1, Section 1
Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
1 week 5 days ago
It's easier to be faithful to...

It's easier to be faithful to a restaurant than it is to a woman.

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Fidelity
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 4 days ago
Written words differ from spoken words...

Written words differ from spoken words in being material structures. A spoken word is a process in the physical world, having an essential time-order; a written word is a series of pieces of matter, having an essential space-order.

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An Outline of Philosophy Ch.4 Language, 1927
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 4 weeks ago
History has proved us, and all...

History has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong. It has made it clear that the state of economic development on the Continent at that time was not, by a long way, ripe for the removal of capitalist production.

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Introduction (1895) to Marx's The Class Struggles in France
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 weeks ago
Knowledge is the plague of life,...

Knowledge is the plague of life, and consciousness, an open wound in its heart.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 5 days ago
Religion, which should most distinguish us...

Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts.

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Book IV, Ch. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 1 day ago
Avarice is as destitute of what...

Avarice is as destitute of what it has, as what it has not.

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Maxim 927
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 4 days ago
Marriage is for women the commonest...

Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 4 weeks ago
If life becomes hard to bear...

If life becomes hard to bear we think of improvements. But the most important and effective improvement, in our own attitude, hardly occurs to us, and we can decide on this only with the utmost difficulty.

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p. 60e
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 2 days ago
Gratitude looks to the past and...

Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.

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Letter XVI
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 days ago
I fancy I need more than...

I fancy I need more than another to speak (rather than write), with such a formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of boulders.

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Letter to Thomas Carlyle, 30 October 1841
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 3 days ago
The Age of Empty Freedom ......

The Age of Empty Freedom ... does not know that man must first through labour, industry, and art, learn how to know; but it has a certain fixed standard for all conceptions, and an established Common Sense of Mankind always ready and at hand, innate within itself and there present without trouble on its part;-and those conceptions and this Common Sense are to it the measure of the efficient and the real. It has this great advantage over the Age of Science, that it knows all things without having learned anything; and can pass judgment upon whatever comes before it at once and without hesitation,-without needing any preliminary evidence:-'That which I do not immediately comprehend by the conceptions which dwell within me, is nothing,'-says Empty Freedom.

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p. 20
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 weeks 1 day ago
Free trade, one of the greatest...

Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.

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p. 161
Philosophical Maxims
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