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Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months ago
It belongs to the imperfection of...

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 3 weeks ago
Unfortunately, instead of working out that...

Unfortunately, instead of working out that they have probably misunderstood evolution, creationists conclude, instead, that evolution must be false.

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Heat the Hornet, a review of Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution is True
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
3 months 2 weeks ago
When my ability to reason shows...

When my ability to reason shows me that the suffering of another being is very similar to my own suffering and matters just as much to that other being as my own suffering matters to me, then my reason is showing me something that is undeniably true. ... The perspective on ourselves that we get when we take the point of view of the universe also yields as much objectivity as we need if we are to find a cause that is worthwhile in a way that is independent of our own desires. The most obvious such cause is the reduction of pain and suffering, wherever it is to be found.

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p. 238
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 3 weeks ago
We should not pretend to understand...

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy. Variant translation: We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.

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Conclusion, p. 628
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
Only those moments count when the...

Only those moments count when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you'd prefer to blow your brains out than to exchange a word with someone.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 3 weeks ago
There lay certitude; there, in the...

There lay certitude; there, in the daily round. All the rest hung on mere threads and trivial contingencies; you couldn't waste your time on it. The thing was to do your job as it should be done.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 day ago
I do not think that the...

I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.

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"The Emotional Factor"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks ago
The uttered part of a man's...

The uttered part of a man's life, let us always repeat, bears to the unuttered, unconscious part a small unknown proportion. He himself never knows it, much less do others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months ago
I like a church, I like...

I like a church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul, And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see, Would I that cowled churchman be. Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure?

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The Problem, st. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 weeks ago
The new science of communication is...

The new science of communication is percept, not concept.

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(p. 259)
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 3 weeks ago
Certain success evicts one from the...

Certain success evicts one from the paradise of winning against the odds.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 3 weeks ago
This whole creation is essentially subjective,...

This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.

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General Aspects of Dream Psychology
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 weeks ago
All meaning alters with acceleration, because...

All meaning alters with acceleration, because all patterns of personal and political interdependence change with any acceleration of information.

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(p. 178-179)
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 3 weeks ago
It would be deeply depressing if...

It would be deeply depressing if the only way children could get moral values was from religion. Either from scripture, and God knows we don't want them to get it from scripture, I mean, just look at scripture. Or, from being afraid of God, being intimidated by God. Anybody who is good for only those two reasons is not really being good at all. Why not teach children things like the Golden Rule, do as you would be done by, how would you like it if other children did that to you, so why do you do it to them... I think it's depressing that anybody should suggest that you actually need God in order to be moral. I would hope that our morals come from a better source than that, and therefore they are genuinely moral rather than based on outmoded scripture, or based on fear.

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BBC,
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
8 months 5 days ago
Hollywood, an ideological state apparatus

At the beginning of November 2001, there was a series of meetings between White House advisers and senior Hollywood executives with the aim of coordinating the war effort and establishing how Hollywood could help in the "war against terrorism" by getting the right ideological message across not only to Americans, but also to the Hollywood public around the globe — the ultimate empirical proof that Hollywood does in fact function as an "ideological state apparatus."

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Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
3 months 4 days ago
The dead govern the living....

The dead govern the living.

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Le Catéchisme positiviste
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks ago
Cash Payment the sole nexus; and...

Cash Payment the sole nexus; and there are so many things which cash will not pay! Cash is a great miracle; yet it has not all power in Heaven, nor even on Earth. 'Supply and demand' we will honour also; and yet how many 'demands' are there, entirely indispensable, which have to go elsewhere than to the shops, and produce quite other than cash, before they can get their supply? On the whole, what astonishing payments does cash make in this world!

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Ch. 7, Not Laissez-Faire.
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
3 months 2 weeks ago
When Alexander the Great addressed him...

When Alexander the Great addressed him with greetings, and asked if he wanted anything, Diogenes replied "Yes, stand a little out of my sunshine."

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From Plutarch, Alexander, 14. Cf. Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 38, Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, v. 32
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel
1 week 3 days ago
Man's position in the world is...

Man's position in the world is defined by the fact that in every dimension of his being and behavior he finds himself at every moment between two boundaries. This condition appears as the formal structure of our existence, filled always with different contents in life's diverse provinces, activities, and destinies. We feel that the content and value of every hour stands between a higher and a lower; every thought between a wiser and a more foolish; every possession between a more extended and a more limited; every deed between a greater and a lesser measure of meaning, adequacy, and morality.

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p. 1. Opening line of first essay "Life as Transcendence"
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 1 week ago
Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much....

Virtue by premeditation isn't worth much.

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H 13
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
3 months 2 weeks ago
Let us consider first the view...

Let us consider first the view that it is always wrong to take an innocent human life. We may call this the "sanctity of life" view. People who take this view oppose abortion and euthanasia. They do not usually, however, oppose the killing of nonhuman animals-so perhaps it would be more accurate to describe this view as the "sanctity of human life" view. The belief that human life, and only human life, is sacrosanct is a form of speciesism.

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Ch. 1: All Animals Are Equal
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 4 weeks 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
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks ago
Before I became old…

Before I became old I tried to live well; now that I am old, I shall try to die well; but dying well means dying gladly.

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Line 2.
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 3 weeks ago
He that is not with me...

He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.

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Luke 11:23 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 3 weeks ago
Exercise is the technique by which...

Exercise is the technique by which one imposes on the body tasks that are both repetitive and different, but always graduated. By bending behavior towards a terminal state, exercise makes possible a perpetual characterization of the individual...It thus assures, in the form of continuity and constraint, a growth, an observation, a qualification.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months ago
Mathematics takes us still further from...

Mathematics takes us still further from what is human, into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the world, but every possible world, must conform.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
1 week 4 days ago
Man can hardly even recognize the...

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.

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This quote was attributed to Albert Schweitzer by Rachel Carson on p. 17 of her seminal work Silent Spring (1962), and is widely cited on various Internet websites, but an actual source from Schweitzer's works is elusive.
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
2 months 3 weeks ago
We are firmly convinced that the...

We are firmly convinced that the most imperfect republic is a thousand times better than the most enlightened monarchy. In a republic, there are at least brief periods when the people, while continually exploited, is not oppressed; in the monarchies, oppression is constant. The democratic regime also lifts the masses up gradually to participation in public life--something the monarchy never does. Nevertheless, while we prefer the republic, we must recognise and proclaim that whatever the form of government may be, so long as human society continues to be divided into different classes as a result of the hereditary inequality of occupations, of wealth, of education, and of rights, there will always be a class-restricted government and the inevitable exploitation of the majorities by the minorities. The State is nothing but this domination and this exploitation, well regulated and systematised.

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Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 months 2 days ago
Nonviolence is an ideal that cannot...

Nonviolence is an ideal that cannot always be fully honored in the practice. To the degree that those who practice nonviolent resistance put their body in the way of an external power, they make physical contact, presenting a force against force in the process. Nonviolence does not imply the absence of force or of aggression. It is, as it were, an ethical stylization of embodiment, replete with gestures and modes of non-action, ways of becoming an obstacle, of using the solidity of the body and its proprioceptive object field to block or derail a further exercise of violence.

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p. 22
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 3 weeks ago
The intellectual is called on the...

The intellectual is called on the carpet. ... Don't you conceal something? You talk a language which is suspect. You don't talk like the rest of us, like the man in the street, but rather like a foreigner who does not belong here. We have to cut you down to size, expose your tricks, purge you.

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p. 192
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 5 days ago
That some have never dreamed is...

That some have never dreamed is as improbable as that some have never laughed.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 4 weeks ago
An intellectual is a person who...

An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.

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As quoted without citation in Discovering Evolutionary Ecology: Bringing Together Ecology And Evolution (2006) by Peter J. Mayhew, p. 24
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 3 weeks ago
I make no secret about being...

I make no secret about being Jewish ... I just think it's more important to be human and to have a human heritage; and I think it is wrong for anyone to feel that there is anything special about any one heritage of whatever kind. It is delightful to have the human heritage exist in a thousand varieties, for it makes for greater interest, but as soon as one variety is thought to be more important than another, the groundwork is laid for destroying them all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Avicenna
Avicenna
4 months 2 weeks ago
Religious law makes it illegal for...

Religious law makes it illegal for the ignorant to drink wine, but intelligence makes it legal for the intellectual.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months ago
Irony limits, finitizes, and circumscribes and...

Irony limits, finitizes, and circumscribes and thereby yields truth, actuality, content; it disciplines and punishes and thereby yields balance and consistency.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 months 2 days ago
Once animals had a more sacred,...

Once animals had a more sacred, more divine character than men. There is not even a reign of the "human" in primitive societies, and for a long time the animal order has been the order of reference. Only the animal is worth being sacrificed, as a god, the sacrifice of man only comes afterward, according to a degraded order. Men qualify only by their affiliation to the animal: the Bororos "are" macaws. "

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The Animals: Territory and Metamorphoses," p. 133
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 4 weeks ago
Pragmatism, on the other hand, asks...

Pragmatism, on the other hand, asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?"

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Lecture VI, Pragmatism's Conception of Truth
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Just now
It is a palpable falsehood to...

It is a palpable falsehood to say we can have specie for our paper whenever demanded. Instead, then, of yielding to the cries of scarcity of medium set up by speculators, projectors and commercial gamblers, no endeavors should be spared to begin the work of reducing it by such gradual means as may give time to private fortunes to preserve their poise, and settle down with the subsiding medium; and that, for this purpose, the States should be urged to concede to the General Government, with a saving of chartered rights, the exclusive power of establishing banks of discount for paper.

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6 November 1813, ME 13:431: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson "Memorial Edition" (20 Vols., 1903-04) edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. 13, p. 431
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks ago
Alexander, king of Macedon, began to...

Alexander, king of Macedon, began to study geometry; unhappy man, because he would thereby learn how puny was that earth of which he had seized but a fraction! Unhappy man, I repeat, because he was bound to understand that he was bearing a false title. For who can be "great" in that which is puny?

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months ago
But voice is a certain sound...

But voice is a certain sound of that which is animated; for nothing inanimate emits a voice; but they are said to emit a voice from similitude, as a pipe, and a lyre, and such other inanimate things, have extension, modulation, and dialect; for thus it appears, because voice, also, has these.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
Just now
I've fought with men and gods,...

I've fought with men and gods, I've weighed them well and foundthe sea more firm than earth, the air more firm than sea,and man's impalpable soul still yet more firm than air!

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Odysseus, Book XI, line 846
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
Not one moment when I have...

Not one moment when I have not been conscious of being outside Paradise.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks ago
The spoken Word, the written Poem,...

The spoken Word, the written Poem, is said to be an epitome of the man; how much more the done Work. Whatsoever of morality and of intelligence; what of patience, perseverance, faithfulness, of method, insight, ingenuity, energy; in a word, whatsoever of Strength the man had in him will lie written in the Work he does. To work: why, it is to try himself against Nature, and her everlasting unerring Laws; these will tell a true verdict as to the man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 month 3 weeks ago
A good American makes propaganda for...

A good American makes propaganda for whatever existence has forced him to become.

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"Cousins," from Him With His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984), p. 263
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 2 weeks ago
The superior man, while there is...

The superior man, while there is anything he has not studied, or while in what he has studied there is anything he cannot understand, Will not intermit his labor. While there is anything he has not inquired about, or anything in what he has inquired about which he does not know, he will not intermit his labor. While there is anything which he has not reflected on, or anything in what he has reflected on which he does not apprehend, he will not intermit his labor. While there is anything which he has not discriminated or his discrimination is not clear, he will not intermit his labor. If there be anything which he has not practiced, or his practice fails in earnestness, he will not intermit his labor. If another man succeed by one effort, he will use a hundred efforts. If another man succeed by ten efforts, he will use a thousand. Let a man proceed in this way, and, though dull, he will surely become intelligent; though weak, he will surely become strong.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Just now
As pure a son of liberty...

As pure a son of liberty as I have ever known.

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Statement about Tadeusz Kościuszko, in a letter to Horatio Gates
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months ago
For my own part, not believing...

For my own part, not believing in universal selfishness, I have no difficulty in admitting that Communism would even now be practicable among the elite of mankind, and may become so among the rest.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 2 weeks 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
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 week ago
Neither family, nor privilege...
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Main Content / General
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 4 weeks ago
Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.

Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.

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Philosophical Maxims
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