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Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 2 weeks ago
The Superego, in censoring the unconscious...

The Superego, in censoring the unconscious and in implanting conscience, also censors the censor.

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p. 76
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Without God, everything is nothingness; and...

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

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Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
2 weeks 6 days ago
In the Koran as in the...

In the Koran as in the Bible, politics is divinized, and human reason, crushed by the religious ascendancy, cannot insinuate its isolating and corrosive poison into the mechanisms of government, so that citizens are believers whose loyalty is exalted to faith, and obedience to enthusiasm and fanaticism.

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p. 78
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 1 week ago
A young man should serve...

A young man should serve his parents at home and be respectful to elders outside his home. He should be earnest and truthful, loving all, but become intimate with humaneness. After doing this, if he has energy to spare, he can study literature and the arts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim
2 weeks 5 days ago
In attempting to expose the views...

In attempting to expose the views of another, one is forced to make one's own view appear infallible and absolute, which is a procedure altogether to be avoided if one is making a specifically non-evaluative investigation. The second possible approach is nevertheless to combine such a non-evaluative analysis with a definite epistemology. Viewed from the angle of this second approach there are two separate and distinct solutions to the problem of what constitutes reliable knowledge - the one solution may be termed relationism, and the other relativism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
1 month 3 days ago
Let me give you a definition...

Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life - it is bad to damage and destroy life. And this ethic, profound and universal, has the significance of a religion. It is religion.

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As quoted in Albert Schweitzer : The Man and His Mind (1947) by George Seaver, p. 366
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt
3 weeks ago
What remains is the remarkable and,...

What remains is the remarkable and, for many, certainly disquieting diagnosis that all genuine political theories presuppose man to be evil, i.e., by no means an unproblematic but a dangerous and dynamic being.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months ago
As to why some are touched...

As to why some are touched by the law and others not, so that some receive and others scorn the offer of grace...[this is the] hidden will of God, Who, according to His own counsel, ordains such persons as He wills to receive and partake of the mercy preached and offered.

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p. 169
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 6 days ago
When you close your doors, and...

When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?

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Book I, ch. 14, 13, 14.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 1 week ago
Scientific men get an awkward habit...

Scientific men get an awkward habit - no, I won't call it that, for it is a valuable habit - of believing nothing unless there is evidence for it; and they have a way of looking upon belief which is not based upon evidence, not only as illogical, but as immoral.

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Thomas Henry Huxley. "Lectures on Evolution Title: This is Essay# 3 from" Science and Hebrew Tradition." (1882); as cited in: William Trufant Foster, (1908) Argumentation and debating, p. 55
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is said that…

It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.

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Letter to François-Louis-Henri Leriche (6 February 1770) Note: In his Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 2 weeks ago
The criticism of the reformers was...

The criticism of the reformers was directed not so much at the weakness or cruelty of those in authority, as at a bad economy of power.

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Chapter Two, pp.. 79
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 2 weeks ago
Art is the activity that exalts...

Art is the activity that exalts and denies simultaneously. "No artist tolerates reality," says Nietzsche.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 4 weeks ago
Tyranny offers relief from the burden...

Tyranny offers relief from the burden of sanity and a licence to enact forbidden impulses of hatred and violence. By acting on these impulses and releasing them in their subjects tyrants give people a kind of happiness, which as individuals they may be incapable of achieving.

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An Old Chaos: What a Tyrant Can Do For You (p. 57)
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 3 weeks ago
The determination to print them (his...

The determination to print them (his lectures), and to communicate them to the General Public, must also speak for itself; and should it not do so, any other recommendation of them would be thrown away. Thus, with respect to the appearance of this work, I have nothing further to say to the Public, than that I have nothing to say.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
Mahomet was only fourteen; had no...

Mahomet was only fourteen; had no language but his own: much in Syria must have been a strange unintelligible whirlpool to him. But the eyes of the lad were open; glimpses of many things would doubtless be taken in, and lie very enigmatic as yet, which were to ripen in a strange way into views, into beliefs and insights one day. These journeys to Syria were probably the beginning of much to Mahomet. One other circumstance we must not forget: that he had no school-learning; of the thing we call school-learning none at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 5 days ago
What so impressed me on that...

What so impressed me on that first reading was the self-containedness of Tolkien's world. I suppose there are a few novelists who have created worlds that are uniquely their own -- Faulkner, for example, or Dickens. But since their world is fairly close to the actual world, it cannot really be called a unique creation. The only parallel that occurs to me is the Wagner Ring cycle, that one can only enter as if taking a holiday on a strange planet.

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pp. 8-9
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months ago
For my own part, I may...

For my own part, I may desire in general to be other than I am; I may condemn and dislike my whole form, and beg of Almighty God for an entire reformation, and that He will please to pardon my natural infirmity: but I ought not to call this repentance, methinks, no more than the being dissatisfied that I am not an angel or Cato. My actions are regular, and conformable to what I am and to my condition; I can do no better; and repentance does not properly touch things that are not in our power; sorrow does.. I imagine an infinite number of natures more elevated and regular than mine; and yet I do not for all that improve my faculties, no more than my arm or will grow more strong and vigorous for conceiving those of another to be so.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
When I was a boy, I...

When I was a boy, I had a clock with a pendulum that could be lifted off. I found that the clock went very much faster without the pendulum. If the main purpose of a clock is to go, the clock was the better for losing its pendulum. True, it could no longer tell the time, but that did not matter if one could teach oneself to be indifferent to the passage of time. The linguistic philosophy which cares only about language and not about the world, is like the boy who preferred the clock without the pendulum because, although it no longer told the time, it went more easily than before and at a more exhilarating pace.

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Foreword to Ernest Gellner Words and Things, 1959
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
5 months 5 days ago
A doubtful balance is made between...

A doubtful balance is made between truth and pleasure, and... the knowledge of one and the feeling of the other stir up a combat the success of which is very uncertain, since, in order to judge of it, it would be necessary to know all that passes in the innermost spirit of the man, of which man himself is scarcely ever conscious.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 3 weeks ago
If there ever are great revolutions...

If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. That is to say, it will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise thereto.

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Book Three, Chapter XXI.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
3 months 1 week ago
You do not attain to knowledge...

You do not attain to knowledge by remaining on the shore and watching the foaming waves, you must make the venture and cast yourself in, you must swim, alert and with all your force, even if a moment comes when you think you are losing consciousness; in this way, and in no other, do you reach anthropological insight.

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p. 148
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 3 weeks ago
Though the profusion of Government must...

Though the profusion of Government must undoubtedly have retarded the natural progress of England to wealth and improvement, it has not been able to stop it.

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Chapter III.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
There is always someone above you:...

There is always someone above you: beyond God Himself rises Nothingness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
This Burns appeared under every disadvantage:...

This Burns appeared under every disadvantage: uninstructed, poor, born only to hard manual toil; and writing, when it came to that, in a rustic special dialect, known only to a small province of the country he lived in. Had he written, even what he did write, in the general language of England, I doubt not he had already become universally recognized as being, or capable to be, one of our greatest men.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
3 weeks 2 days ago
Life is a crusade in the...

Life is a crusade in the service of God. Whether we wished to or not, we set out as crusaders to free - not the Holy Sepulchre - but that God buried in matter and in our souls. Every body, every soul is a Holy Sepulcher. Every seed of grain is a Holy Sepulchre; let us free it! The brain is a Holy Sepulchre, God sprawls within it and battles with death; let us run to his assistance!

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 1 day ago
There is not a truth existing...

There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world.

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Letter to Henry Lee
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 3 weeks ago
Free trade is not based on...

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 day ago
Turning your back...
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Main Content / General
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
Man Thinking must not be subdued...

Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.

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par. 20
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
2 weeks 6 days ago
Providence has given the French nation...

Providence has given the French nation precisely two instruments, two arms, so to speak, with which it stirs up the world - the French language and the spirit of proselytism that forms the essence of the nation's character.

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Chapter II, p. 20
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 weeks ago
God made us: invented us as...

God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself.

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Book II, Chapter 3, "The Shocking Alternative"
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is the peculiarity of privilege...

It is the peculiarity of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the intellect and heart of man. The privileged man, whether he be privileged politically or economically, is a man depraved in intellect and heart.

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As quoted in "Socialism" article of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition (1887), edited by Thomas Spencer Baynes with assistance of William Robertson Smith, Vol. 22, p. 216, Charles Scribner's Sons
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
2 months 5 days ago
No collection of facts is ever...

No collection of facts is ever complete, because the Universe is without bounds. And no synthesis or interpretation is ever final, because there are always fresh facts to be found after the first collection has been provisionally arranged.

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Vol. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 months 4 days ago
The progressive world is necessarily divided...

The progressive world is necessarily divided into two classes - those who take the best of what there is and enjoy it - those who wish for something better and try to create it. Without these two classes the world would be badly off. They are the very conditions of progress, both the one and the other. Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
In books lies the soul of...

In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.

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Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
3 weeks 1 day ago
Let me say and not mourn:...

Let me say and not mourn: the world lives in the death of speech and sings there.

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The Silence
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 2 weeks ago
The Son of man shall be...

The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men: And they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again.

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17:22-23 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
There's a Bible on that shelf...

There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire - poison and antidote.

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In Kenneth Harris Talking To: Bertrand Russell, 1971
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 1 week ago
When one asked him what boys...

When one asked him what boys should learn, "That," said he, "which they shall use when men."

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Of Agesilaus the Great
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 5 days ago
Power is never naked. Rather, it...

Power is never naked. Rather, it is eloquent.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 3 weeks ago
In my individual heart I fully...

In my individual heart I fully believe my faith is as robust as yours. The trouble with your robust and full bodied faiths, however, is, that they begin to cut each others throats too soon, and for getting on in the world and establishing a modus vivendi these pestilential refinements and reasonablenesses and moderations have to creep in.

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Letter to John Jay Chapman, 5 April 1897
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
3 months 3 weeks ago
Wit is the appearance, the external...

Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.

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Aphorism 26, as translated in Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms (1968)
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 1 week ago
But both courses are to be...

But both courses are to be avoided; you should not copy the bad simply because they are many, nor should you hate the many because they are unlike you.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 1 week ago
The prospects of revolution seem therefore...

The prospects of revolution seem therefore quite restricted. For can a revolution avoid war? It is, however, on this feeble chance that we must stake everything or abandon all hope. An advanced country will not encounter, in the case of revolution, the difficulties which in backward Russia served as a base for the barbarous regime of Stalin. But a war of any scope will give rise to others as formidable.

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Reflections on War (1933); also in Formative Writings
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 months 3 weeks ago
People like us are unhappy in...

People like us are unhappy in this world and in the next, I guess if we made it to heaven, we'd have to help make it thunder.

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Scene VI.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
Among human beings, the subjection of...

Among human beings, the subjection of women is much more complete at a certain level of civilization than it is among savages. And the subjection is always reinforced by morality.

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Ch. 15: Power and moral codes
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 1 week ago
And here, facing this supreme religious...

And here, facing this supreme religious sacrifice, we reach the summit of the tragedy, the very heart of it - the sacrifice of our own individual consciousness upon the alter of the perfected Human Consciousness, of the Divine Consciousness. But is there really a tragedy? ...if we could succeed in understanding and feeling that we were going to enrich Christ, should we hesitate for a moment in surrendering ourselves to Him? Would the stream that flows into the sea, and feels in the freshness of its waters the bitterness of the salt of the ocean, wish to flow back to its source? would it wish to return to the cloud which drew it life from the sea? is it not joy to feel itself absorbed?

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 3 weeks ago
Titles of property, for instance railway...

Titles of property, for instance railway shares, may change hands every day, and their owner may make a profit by their sale even in foreign countries, so that titles to property are exportable, although the railway itself is not.

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Vol. II, Ch. X, p. 215.
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 2 weeks ago
When animus and anima meet, the...

When animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduction. The outcome need not always be negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love (a special instance of love at first sight).

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Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.338.30
Philosophical Maxims
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