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comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 1 day ago
Political ideals must...
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Main Content / General
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 weeks 1 day ago
This perversion of the ethical values...

This perversion of the ethical values soon crystallized into the all-dominating slogan of the Communist Party: THE END JUSTIFIES ALL MEANS. Similarly in the past the Inquisition and the Jesuits adopted this motto and subordinated to it all morality. It avenged itself upon the Jesuits as it did upon the Russian Revolution. In the wake of this slogan followed lying, deceit, hypocrisy and treachery, murder, open and secret. It should be of utmost interest to students of social psychology that two movements as widely separated in time and ideas as Jesuitism and Bolshevism reached exactly similar results in the evolution of the principle that the end justifies all means. The historic parallel, almost entirely ignored so far, contains a most important lesson for all coming revolutions and for the whole future of mankind.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 days ago
Love is something far more than...

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
Just now
The mask, like the side-show freak,...

The mask, like the side-show freak, is mainly participatory rather than pictorial in its sensory appeal.

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(p. 352)
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
5 days ago
People no longer look at each...

People no longer look at each other, but there are institutes for that. They no longer touch each other, but there is contactotherapy. They no longer walk, but they go jogging, etc. Everywhere one recycles lost faculties, or lost bodies, or lost sociality, or the lost taste for food.

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"The Precession of Simulacra," p. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 days 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
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 days ago
Plato was synthesis of Europe and...

Plato was synthesis of Europe and Asia, and a decidedly Oriental element pervades his philosophy, giving it a sunrise color.

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Quoted in Swami Abhedananda, India and Her People, 6th ed., Calcutta: Ramakrishna Vedanta Math, 1945
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 1 week ago
For truth itself does not have...

For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.

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Ch. 13
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
3 weeks 3 days ago
Classical science was based upon the...

Classical science was based upon the belief that it is possible to formulate both the position and velocity at one time of any given particle. It followed that knowledge of the position and velocity of a given number of particles would enable the future behavior of the whole collection to be accurately predicted. The principle of Heisenberg is that given the determination of position, its velocity can be stated only as of a certain order of probability, while if its velocity is determined the correlative factor of position can be stated only as of a certain order of probability. Both cannot be determined at once, from which it follows necessarily that the future of the whole collection cannot possibly be foretold except in terms of some order of probability.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
1 month 3 weeks ago
Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot...

Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'here are our monsters', without immediately turning the monsters into pets.

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Some Statements and Truisms about Neologisms, Newisms, Postisms, Parasitisms, and other small Seismisms, The States of Theory, ed. David Carroll, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 days ago
[France is] a Country where the...

[France is] a Country where the people, along with their political servitude, have thrown off the Yoke of Laws and morals.

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Letter to William Windham (27 September 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 days ago
When one admits that nothing is...

When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless.

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"Skepticism"
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 weeks 4 days ago
L'action est l'aiguille indicatrice de la...

Action is the pointer which shows the balance. We must not touch the pointer but the weight.

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p. 97
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 1 week ago
There is surely a piece of...

There is surely a piece of Divinity within us, something that was before the Elements, and owes no homage unto the Sun.

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Section 11
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 days ago
The yogi, absorbed in contemplation, contributes...

The yogi, absorbed in contemplation, contributes in his degree to creation: he breathes a divine perfume, he hears wonderful things. Divine forms traverse him without tearing him, and, united to the nature which is proper to him, he goes, he acts as animating original matter. To some extent, and at rare intervals even I am a yogi .

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Quoted in R. Malhotra and V. Viswanathan, Snakes in the Ganga: Breaking India 2.0., 2022
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 weeks ago
To make more plans than an...

To make more plans than an explorer or a crook, yet to be infected at the will's very root.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 weeks ago
One grasps incomparably more things in...

One grasps incomparably more things in boredom than by labor, effort being the mortal enemy of meditation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 weeks 4 days ago
A new commandment I give unto...

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

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13:34-35 KJV
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 4 days ago
So that it will be found...

So that it will be found that the fundamental fault in the character of women is that they have no "sense of justice ." This arises from their deficiency in the power of reasoning already referred to, and reflection, but is also partly due to the fact that Nature has not destined them, as the weaker sex, to be dependent on strength but on cunning; this is why they are instinctively crafty, and have an ineradicable tendency to lie.

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On Women
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 day ago
I hope, said the third, that...

I hope, said the third, that your wanderings in lonely places do not mean that you have any of the romantic virus still in your blood. His name was Mr. Humanist.

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Pilgrim's Regress 90
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Speaking with sense we must fortify...

Speaking with sense we must fortify ourselves in the common sense of all, as a city is fortified by its law, and even more forcefully. For all human laws are nourished by the one divine law. For it prevails as far as it will and suffices for all and is superabundant.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
3 weeks 3 days ago
When we come to inanimate elements,...

When we come to inanimate elements, the prevailing view has been that time and sequential change are entirely foreign to their nature. According to this view they do not have careers; they simply change their relations is space. We have only to think of the classic conception of atoms. The Newtonian atom, for example, moved and was moved, thus changing its position in space, but it was unchangeable in its own being. ... In itself it was like a God, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
1 month 2 weeks ago
As Athenodorus was taking his leave...

As Athenodorus was taking his leave of Cæsar, "Remember," said he, "Cæsar, whenever you are angry, to say or do nothing before you have repeated the four-and-twenty letters to yourself."

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Cæsar Augustus
Philosophical Maxims
Gottlob frege
Gottlob frege
3 weeks 4 days ago
Being true is different from being...

Being true is different from being taken as true, whether by one or by many or everybody, and in no case is it to be reduced to it. There is no contradiction in something's being true which everybody takes to be false. I understand by 'laws of logic' not psychological laws of takings-to-be-true, but laws of truth. ...If being true is thus independent of being acknowledged by somebody or other, then the laws of truth are not psychological laws: they are boundary stones set in an eternal foundation, which our thought can overflow, but never displace. It is because of this that they have authority for our thought if it would attain truth. They do not bear the relation to thought that the laws of grammar bear to language; they do not make explicit the nature of our human thinking and change as it changes.

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Introduction, Tr. Montgomery Furth
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 4 weeks ago
We get into the habit of...

We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 days ago
I believe that Communism is necessary...

I believe that Communism is necessary to the world, and I believe that the heroism of Russia has fired men's hopes in a way which was essential to the realization of Communism in the future. Regarded as a splendid attempt, without which ultimate success would have been very improbable, Bolshevism deserves the gratitude and admiration of all the progressive part of mankind.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
2 months 4 days ago
Many of these were not prisoners...

Many of these were not prisoners of war, and redeemed from savage conquerors, as some plead; and they who were such prisoners, the English, who promote the war for that very end, are the guilty authors of their being so; and if they were redeemed, as is alleged, they would owe nothing to the redeemer but what he paid for them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 3 days ago
Surplus value is exactly equal to...

Surplus value is exactly equal to surplus labour; the increase of the one [is] exactly measured by the diminution of necessary labour.

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Notebook III, The Chapter on Capital, p. 259.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 4 weeks ago
You could attach prices to ideas....

You could attach prices to ideas. Some cost a lot some little. ... And how do you pay for ideas? I believe: with courage.

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p. 60e
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
3 weeks 3 days ago
I think being a woman is...

I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same.

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The Red and the Green (1965), ch. 2, p. 30.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 days ago
The best university that can be...

The best university that can be recommended to a man of ideas is the gauntlet of the mobs.

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Eloquence
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 3 days ago
Since labour is motion, time is...

Since labour is motion, time is its natural measure.

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Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 125.
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 1 week ago
Americans combine to give fêtes, found...

Americans combine to give fêtes, found seminaries, build churches, distribute books, and send missionaries to the antipodes. Hospitals, prisons, and schools take shape in that way. Finally, if they want to proclaim a truth or propagate some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form an association. In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association. I have come across several types of association in America of which, I confess, I had not previously the slightest conception, and I have often admired the extreme skill they show in proposing a common object for the exertions of very many and in inducing them voluntarily to pursue it.

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Book Two, Chapter V.
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
5 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
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 day ago
I am condemned...

I am condemned to be free.

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Part 4, chapter 1
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
3 weeks 4 days ago
The repose of sleep refreshes only...

The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.

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Ch. 2, sect. 3
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 2 days ago
We can act as if there...

We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.

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Lecture III, "The Reality of the Unseen"
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 1 week ago
The public, therefore, among a democratic...

The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot conceive; for it does not persuade others to its beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual intelligence.

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Book One, Chapter II.
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 weeks 1 day ago
I could see clearly that this...

I could see clearly that this problem could only be solved on the individual and personal level; political revolt is irrelevant. Both Camus and Sartre had been neatly hog-tied by their earlier radicalism. Camus came to see that rebellion is a political roundabout that revolves back to the same old tyranny; too ashamed to admit that he had outgrown his leftism, he found himself in an intellectual cul-de-sac. Sartre accused Camus of being a reactionary; but he paid for his own refusal to reexamine his political convictions by congealing into a grotesque attitude of permanent indignation, shaking his fist at some abstract Authority. Where politics is concerned, he seemed determined to be guided by his emotions.

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p. 101
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 weeks ago
We have convictions only if we...

We have convictions only if we have studied nothing thoroughly.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 5 days ago
The greatest problem for the human...

The greatest problem for the human race, to the solution of which Nature drives man, is the achievement of a universal civic society which administers law among men.

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Fifth Thesis
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 1 week ago
Man is certainly crazy...

Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen.

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Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
1 month 3 weeks ago
With regard to the rather common...

With regard to the rather common general distinction between good and bad sex ..., bad sex is generally better than none at all. This should not be controversial: it seems to hold for other important matters, like food, music, literature, and society. In the end, one must choose from among the available alternatives, whether their availability depends on the environment or on one's own constitution. And the alternatives have to be fairly grim before it becomes rational to opt for nothing.

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"Sexual Perversion" (1969), p. 52.
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
2 weeks 4 days ago
There is absolute truth in anarchism...

There is absolute truth in anarchism and it is to be seen in its attitude to the sovereignty of the state and to every form of state absolutism. ... The religious truth of anarchism consists in this, that power over man is bound up with sin and evil, that a state of perfection is a state where there is no power of man over man, that is to say, anarchy. The Kingdom of God is freedom and the absence of such power... the Kingdom of God is anarchy.

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Slavery and Freedom (1939), p. 147
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 day ago
We all want progress. But progress...

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.

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Book I, Chapter 5, "We Have Cause to Be Uneasy"
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
1 month 3 weeks ago
With an ignorant man thou shouldst...

With an ignorant man thou shouldst not become a confederate and associate.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
2 months 2 weeks ago
If a person gave your body...

If a person gave your body to any stranger he met on his way, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in handing over your own mind to be confused and mystified by anyone who happens to verbally attack you?

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(28) [tr. Elizabeth Carter]
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 4 days ago
Fools have a habit of believing...

Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 weeks 5 days ago
Our longing to save consciousness, to...

Our longing to save consciousness, to give personal and human finality to the Universe and to existence, is such that even in the midst of a supreme, an agonizing and lacerating sacrifice, we should still hear the voice that assured us that if our consciousness disappears, it is that the infinite and eternal Consciousness may be enriched thereby, that our souls may serve as a nutriment to the Universal soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
2 months 4 days ago
Why has the Revolution of France...

Why has the Revolution of France been stained with crimes, which the Revolution of the United States of America was not? Men are physically the same in all countries; it is education that makes them different. Accustom a people to believe that priests or any other class of men can forgive sins, and you will have sins in abundance.

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Worship and Church Bells, 1797
Philosophical Maxims
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