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Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 4 weeks ago
Without God, everything is nothingness; and...

Without God, everything is nothingness; and with God? Supreme nothingness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 2 weeks ago
Nothing is more impressive than the...

Nothing is more impressive than the fact that as mathematics withdrew increasingly into the upper regions of ever greater extremes of abstract thought, it returned back to earth with a corresponding growth of importance for the analysis of concrete fact. ...The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.

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Ch. 2: "Mathematics as an Element in the History of Thought", p. 46
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 2 weeks ago
In anger…

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

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As quoted in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 23-24, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 370
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months ago
I don't believe in an afterlife,...

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 month 3 days ago
Do you believe in dreams, Uncle...

Do you believe in dreams, Uncle Simeon? I do; I believe in nothing else. One night I dreamed that invisible enemies had me tied to a dead cypress. Long red arrows were sticking into me from my head to my feet, and the blood was flowing. On my head they had placed a crown of thorns, and intertwined with the thorns were fiery letters which said: "Saint Blasphemer." I am Saint Blasphemer, Rabbi Simeon. So you'd better not ask me anything else, or I'll start my blasphemies.

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Ch. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 2 weeks ago
If you would be a good...

If you would be a good reader, read; if a writer, write.

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Book II, ch. 18, 1.
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 1 week ago
Like nonhuman animals in human factory...

Like nonhuman animals in human factory farms, free-living nonhumans who are starving - or being disembowelled, asphyxiated or eaten alive - cannot console themselves by chanting the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. The moral case for helping other sentient beings, regardless or race or species, does not rest on the distress their plight does (or doesn't) cause spectators.

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Reply to Meet the people who want to turn predators into herbivores, TreeHugger, 2 Apr. 2015
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
5 months 1 day ago
Many conservative writers have contended that...

Many conservative writers have contended that the tendency to equality in modern social movements is the expression of envy. In this way they seek to discredit this trend, attributing it to collectively harmful impulses.

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Chapter IX, Section 82, p. 538
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 1 week ago
The plague of man is boasting...

The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.

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Ch. 12 (tr. ?)
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
1 month 3 weeks ago
The sun, with all those planets...

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

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Loose paraphrase of Salviati on Day 3
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt
1 month 1 day ago
Every religious, moral, economic, ethical, or...

Every religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms into a political one if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively according to friend and enemy. The political does not reside in the battle itself, which. possesses its own technical, psychological, and military laws, but in the mode of behavior which is determined by this possibility, by clearly evaluating the concrete situation and thereby being able to distinguish correctly the real friend and the real enemy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 2 weeks ago
Do not even think of doing...

Do not even think of doing what ought not to be done.

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Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
5 months 1 day ago
Before we as individuals are even...

Before we as individuals are even conscious of our existence we have been profoundly influenced for a considerable time (since before birth) by our relationship to other individuals who have complicated histories, and are members of a society which has an infinitely more complicated and longer history than they do (and are members of it at a particular time and place in that history); and by the time we are able to make conscious choices we are already making use of categories in a language which has reached a particular degree of development through the lives of countless generations of human beings before us. . . . We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.

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As quoted in Popper (1973) by Bryan Magee
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle
4 weeks ago
And if the matter of the...

And if the matter of the Philosophers Stone, and the manner of preparing it, be such Mysteries as they would have the World believe them, they may Write Intelligibly and Clearly of the Principles of mixt Bodies in General, without Discovering what they call the Great Work.

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Philosophical Maxims
Empedocles
Empedocles
4 months 3 weeks ago
The sight of both eyes…

The sight of both eyes becomes one.

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fr. 88
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
4 months 1 week ago
Do you see this egg? With...

Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world. What is it, this egg, before the seed is introduced into it? An insentient mass. And after the seed has been introduced to into it? What is it then? An insentient mass. For what is the seed itself other than a crude and inanimate fluid? How is this mass to make a transition to a different structure, to sentience, to life? Through heat. And what will produce that heat in it? Motion. "Conversation Between D'Alembert and Diderot", as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker, and The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture (2004) by Louis K Dupré, p. 30 Variant translation: See this egg. It is with this that all the schools of theology and all the temples of the earth are to be overturned.

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As quoted in Diderot, Reason and Resonance (1982) by Élisabeth de Fontenay, p. 217
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
5 months 6 days ago
After experience had taught me that...

After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.

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I, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 2 days ago
I allow nothing for losses by...

I allow nothing for losses by death, but, on the contrary, shall presently take credit four per cent. per annum, for their increase over and above keeping up their own numbers.

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On his profits from slavery as quoted in The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson, by Henry Wiencek, Smithsonian Magazine,
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 4 weeks ago
Tears do not burn except in...

Tears do not burn except in solitude.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 2 weeks ago
Since love grows within you,...

Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 1 week ago
The Virgin Mary remains in the...

The Virgin Mary remains in the middle between Christ and humankind. For in the very moment he was conceived and lived, he was full of grace. All other human beings are without grace, both in the first and second conception. But the Virgin Mary, though without grace in the first conception, was full of grace in the second ... whereas other human beings are conceived in sin, in soul as well as in body, and Christ was conceived without sin in soul as well as in body, the Virgin Mary was conceived in body without grace but in soul full of grace.

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As quoted in Anderson, H. George; Stafford, J. Francis; Burgess, Joseph A., eds. (1992). The One Mediator, The Saints, and Mary. Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue. VIII. Minneapolis: Augsburg. ISBN 0-8066-2579-1., p. 236
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 1 day ago
But the man is a humbug...

But the man is a humbug - a vulgar, shallow, self-satisfied mind, absolutely inaccessible to the complexities and delicacies of the real world. He has the journalist's air of being a specialist in everything, of taking in all points of view and being always on the side of the angels: he merely annoys a reader who has the least experience of knowing things, of what knowing is like. There is not two pence worth of real thought or real nobility in him. But he isn't dull.

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Part of a diary entry dated "Wednesday-Wednesday 9-16 July", 1924, regarding Thomas Babington Macaulay
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
4 months ago
Affection requires a firmer foundation than...

Affection requires a firmer foundation than sympathy, and few people have a principle of action sufficiently stable to produce rectitude of feeling; for in spite of all the arguments I have heard to justify deviations from duty, I am persuaded that even the most spontaneous sensations are more under the direction of principle than weak people are willing to allow.

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Letter 17
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
2 months 2 weeks ago
One cannot collect all the beautiful...

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.

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p. 114
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 4 weeks ago
What is the case, the fact,...

What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.

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(2) Original German: Was der Fall ist, die Tatsache, ist das Bestehen von Sachverhalten.
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 month 3 days ago
"Fire is the first and final...

"Fire is the first and final mask of my God. We dance and weep between two enormous pyres." Our thoughts and our bodies flash and glitter with reflected light. Between the two pyres I stand serenely, my brain unshaken amid the vertigo, and I say: "Time is most short and space most narrow between these two pyres, the rhythm of this life is most sluggish, and I have no time, nor a place to dance in. I cannot wait." Then all at once the rhythm of the earth becomes a vertigo, time disappears, the moment whirls, becomes eternity, and every point in space - insect or star or idea - turns into dance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 2 days ago
For in spite of language, in...

For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.

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"Sermons in Cats"
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months ago
For me any of the little...

For me any of the little gestures I make are all tentative probes. That's why I feel free to make them sound as outrageous or extreme as possible. Until you make it extreme, the probe is not very efficient.

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Marshall McLuhan: the man and his message, edited by George Sanderson and Frank MacDonald, Fulcrum, 1989, p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
5 months 2 weeks ago
But there is nothing…

But there is nothing sweeter than to dwell in towers that rise On high, serene and fortified with teachings of the wise, From which you may peer down upon the others as they stray This way and that, seeking the path of life, losing their way: The skirmishing of wits, the scramble for renown, the fight, Each striving harder than the next, and struggling day and night, To climb atop a heap of riches and lay claim to might.

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Book II, lines 7-13 (tr. Stallings)
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months ago
In this book we turn to...

In this book we turn to the study of new patterns of energy arising from man's physical and psychic artifacts and social organizations. The only method for perceiving process and pattern is by inventory of effects obtained by the comparison and contrast of developing situations.

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(p. 8)
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Thou shalt do no murder, Thou...

Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

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19:18-19 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
3 months 1 week ago
The first task of administrative theory...

The first task of administrative theory is to develop a set of concepts that will permit the description, in terms relevant to the theory, of administrative situations. These concepts, to be scientifically useful, must be operational; that is, their meanings must correspond to empirically observable facts or situations.

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p. 43.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Those who try....

Those who try to include all life when trying to determine justice: Should a man be executed for killing a fly? No? The fly has a short life span? The fly is small? All these rationalizations can be applied to you, by a creature that lives longer, is bigger, etc. #philosophy 

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 months 3 weeks ago
A man who has never been...

A man who has never been within the tropics does not know what a thunderstorm means; a man who has never looked on Niagara has but a faint idea of a cataract; and he who has not read Barère's Memoirs may be said not to know what it is to lie.

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Barère', The Edinburgh Review (April 1844), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. II (1860), p. 109
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 months 1 week ago
The belief that there is some...

The belief that there is some hidden cabal directing the course of events is a type of anthropomorphism - a way of finding agency in the entropy of history.

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In the Puppet Theatre: Puppetry, Conspiracy and Ouija Boards (p. 133)
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
4 weeks 1 day ago
Be not unwilling in what thou...

Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody.

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III, 5
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 3 days ago
Mystery is delightful, but unscientific, since...

Mystery is delightful, but unscientific, since it depends upon ignorance.

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The Analysis of Mind (1921), Lecture I: Recent Criticisms of "Consciousness"
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 2 days ago
I wished, by treating Psychology like...

I wished, by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her to become one.

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A Plea for Psychology as a Natural Science, 1892
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
Just because science....
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Main Content / General
L.P. Jacks
L.P. Jacks
4 weeks 1 day ago
Though science makes no use for...

Though science makes no use for poetry, poetry is enriched by science. Poetry "takes up" the scientific vision and re-expresses its truths, but always in forms which compel us to look beyond them to the total object which is telling its own story and standing in its own rights. In this the poet and the philosopher are one. Using language as the lever, they lift thought above the levels where words perplex and retard its flight, and leave it, at last, standing face to face with the object which reveals itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
5 months 4 days ago
The past treatment of Africans must...

The past treatment of Africans must naturally fill them with abhorrence of Christians; lead them to think our religion would make them more inhuman savages, if they embraced it; thus the gain of that trade has been pursued in opposition to the Redeemer's cause, and the happiness of men: Are we not, therefore, bound in duty to him and to them to repair these injuries, as far as possible, by taking some proper measures to instruct, not only the slaves here, but the Africans in their own countries? Primitive Christians laboured always to spread their Divine Religion; and this is equally our duty while there is an Heathen nation: But what singular obligations are we under to these injured people!

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 4 weeks ago
True, the law is sacred to...

True, the law is sacred to the bourgeois, for it is his own composition, enacted with his consent, and for his benefit and protection. He knows that, even if an individual law should injure him, the whole fabric protects his interests; and more than all, the sanctity of the law, the sacredness of order as established by the active will of one part of society, and the passive acceptance of the other, is the strongest support of his social position. Because the English bourgeois finds himself reproduced in his law, as he does in his God, the policeman's truncheon which, in a certain measure, is his own club, has for him a wonderfully soothing power. But for the working-man quite otherwise! The working-man knows too well, has learned from too oft-repeated experience, that the law is a rod which the bourgeois has prepared for him; and when he is not compelled to do so, he never appeals to the law.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
5 months 2 weeks ago
A little river…

A little river seems to him, who has never seen a larger river, a mighty stream; and so with other things-a tree, a man-anything appears greatest to him that never knew a greater.

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Book VI, lines 674-677 (quoted in The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, tr. W. C. Hazlitt)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 4 weeks ago
When you get over an infatuation,...

When you get over an infatuation, to fall for someone ever again seems so inconceivable that you imagine no one, not even a bug, that is not mired in disappointment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
1 month 3 weeks ago
The great man is the...

The great man is the one who does not lose his child's heart.

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Book 4, pt. 2, v. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking
3 months 1 week ago
To conclude: there are two well-known...

To conclude: there are two well-known minor ways in which language has mattered to philosophy. On the one hand there is a belief that if only we produce good definitions, often marking out different senses of words that are confused in common speech, we will avoid the conceptual traps that ensnared our forefathers. On the other hand is a belief that if only we attend sufficiently closely to our mother tongue and make explicit the distinctions there implicit, we shall avoid the conceptual traps. One or the other of these curiously contrary beliefs may nowadays be most often thought of as an answer to the question Why does language matter to philosophy? Neither seems to me enough.

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Ian Hacking (1975), Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy?, p. 7.
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 months 1 week ago
The idea of a law of...

The idea of a law of progress, or of an all but irresistible tendency to general improvement, is then merely a superstition, one of the tents of the modernist pseudo-religion of humanism. Even if such a law or tendency existed and were demonstrable, the liberal faith in progress would for Santayana be pernicious. For it leads to a corrupt habit of mind in which things are valued, not for their present excellence or perfection, but instrumentally, as leading to something better; and it insinuates into thought and feeling a sort of historical theodicy, in which past evil is justified as a means to present or future good. The idea of progress embodies a kind of time-worship (to adopt an expression used by Wyndham Lewis) in which the particularities of our world are seen and valued, not in themselves, but for what they might perhaps become, thereby leaving us destitute of the sense of the present and, at the same time, of the perspective of eternity.

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'Santayana's Alternative' (p.67-8)
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 3 days ago
A genius and an Apostle are...

A genius and an Apostle are qualitatively different, they are definitions which each belong in their own spheres: the sphere of immanence, and the sphere of transcendence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 3 weeks ago
The superior man, when resting...

The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
5 months 4 days ago
While loving glory…

While loving glory so much how can you persist in a plan which will cause you to lose it?

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Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 130 from Voltaire to Frederick II of Prussia, October 1757.
Philosophical Maxims
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