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Zeno of Citium
Zeno of Citium
2 months 1 week ago
A bad feeling is a commotion...

A bad feeling is a commotion of the mind repugnant to reason, and against nature.

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As quoted in Tusculanae Quaestiones by Cicero, iv. 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
Why do you lack the strength...

Why do you lack the strength to escape the obligation to breathe?

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 4 weeks ago
To love at all is to...

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is said in the Book...

It is said in the Book of Poetry, "In silence is the offering presented, and the spirit approached to; there is not the slightest contention." Therefore the superior man does not use rewards, and the people are stimulated to virtue. He does not show anger, and the people are awed more than by hatchets and battle-axes.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 5 days ago
There is no good father who...

There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.

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No. 51
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 1 day ago
There are three lines of life...

There are three lines of life which stand out prominently to view: the life of pleasure, the political life, and the life of reflection.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 1 day ago
In the Catholic Church, especially, they...

In the Catholic Church, especially, they go into chancery, make a clean confession, give up all, and think to start again. Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

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p. 487
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 1 day ago
The heavens are as deep as...

The heavens are as deep as our aspirations are high.

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Quoted in Maturin M. Ballou (ed.) Pearls of Thought (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1881) p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 2 days ago
It is a want of feeling...

It is a want of feeling to talk of priests and bells while so many infants are perishing in the hospitals, and aged and infirm poor in the streets, from the want of necessaries.

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Worship and Church Bells, 1797
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 1 week ago
If an angel were ever to...

If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound like 2 times 2 equals 13.

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B 44
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 4 days ago
Even the free importation of foreign...

Even the free importation of foreign corn could very little affect the interest of the farmers of Great Britain. Corn is a much more bulky commodity than butcher's-meat. A pound of wheat at a penny is as dear as a pound of butcher's-meat at fourpence. The small quantity of foreign corn imported even in times of the greatest scarcity, may satisfy our farmers that they can have nothing to fear from the freest importation.

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Chapter II
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
What of a truth…

What of a truth that is bounded by these mountains and is falsehood to the world that lives beyond?

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Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
1 month 1 week ago
Man's biological weakness is the condition...

Man's biological weakness is the condition of human culture.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 1 day ago
In a really equal democracy, every...

In a really equal democracy, every or any section would be represented, not disproportionately, but proportionately. ... Unless they are, there is not equal government, but a government of inequality and privilege: one part of the people rule over the rest: there is a part whose fair and equal share of influence in the representation is withheld from them, contrary to all just government, but, above all, contrary to the principle of democracy, which professes equality as its very root and foundation.

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Ch. VII: Of True and False Democracy; Representation of All, and Representation of the Majority only (p. 248)
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 month 4 weeks ago
Only the most perfect human being...

Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy.

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Fichte Studies § 651
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 3 days ago
Have patience awhile; slanders are not...

Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee.

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As quoted in Gems of Thought (1888) edited by Charles Northend
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
3 months 2 weeks ago
Yes, to seek power….

Yes, to seek power that's vain and never grantedand for it to suffer hardship and endless pain:this is to heave and strain to push uphilla boulder, that still from the very top rolls backand bounds and bounces down to the bare, broad field.

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Book III, lines 998-1002 (tr. Frank O. Copley)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 day ago
Many of the actions by which...

Many of the actions by which men have become rich are far more harmful to the community than the obscure crimes of poor men, yet they go unpunished because they do not interfere with the existing order.

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Ch. V: Government and Law
Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
2 months 1 week ago
Place is the greatest thing….

Place is the greatest thing, as it contains all things.

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As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, I, 35
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 4 days ago
The annual produce of the land...

The annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means, but by increasing either the number of its productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed.

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Chapter III, p. 377.
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 1 week ago
What is generally regarded as success...

What is generally regarded as success - acquisition of wealth, the capture of power or social prestige - I consider the most dismal failures. I hold when it is said of a man that he has arrived, it means that he is finished - his development has stopped at that point. I have always striven to remain in a state of flux and continued growth, and not to petrify in a niche of self-satisfaction. If I had my life to live over again, like anyone else, I should wish to alter minor details. But in any of my more important actions and attitudes I would repeat my life as I have lived it. Certainly I should work for Anarchism with the same devotion and confidence in its ultimate triumph.

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 2 weeks ago
Whoever cultivates the golden mean…

Whoever cultivates the golden mean avoids both the poverty of a hovel and the envy of a palace.

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Book II, ode x, line 5
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 3 weeks ago
If there is a sin against...

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 3 days ago
Nature made women mature early and...

Nature made women mature early and had them demand gentle and polite treatment from men, so that they would find themselves imperceptibly fettered by a child due to their own magnanimity; and they would find themselves brought, if not quite to morality itself, then at least to that which cloaks it, moral behavior, which is the preparation and introduction to morality.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), pages 219-220
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
2 months 4 weeks ago
I have tried to set forth...

I have tried to set forth a theory that enables us to understand and to assess these feelings about the primacy of justice. Justice as fairness is the outcome: it articulates these opinions and supports their general tendency.

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Chapter IX, Section 87, p. 586
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
2 months 3 weeks ago
I remind young people everywhere I...

I remind young people everywhere I go, one of the worst things the older generation did was to tell them for twenty-five years "Be successful, be successful, be successful" as opposed to "Be great, be great, be great". There's a qualitative difference.

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Speech in San Francisco: Democracy Matters
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
1 month 3 days ago
I want to block some common...

I want to block some common misunderstandings about "understanding": In many of these discussions one finds a lot of fancy footwork about the word "understanding."

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Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
1 week 6 days ago
The equation of religion with belief...

The equation of religion with belief is rather recent.

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Christianity Among the Religions of the World (New York: Scribner's, 1957) p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 1 day ago
He was one of those who...

He was one of those who wished for the abolition of the Slave Trade. He thought it ought to be abolished on principles of humanity and justice.

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Speech in the House of Commons (9 May 1788), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVII (1816), column 502
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 4 weeks ago
Understand me: I wish to be...

Understand me: I wish to be a man from somewhere, a man among men. You see, a slave, when he passes by, weary and surly, carrying a heavy load, limping along and looking down at his feet, only at his feet to avoid falling down; he is in his town, like a leaf in greenery, like a tree in a forest, argos surrounds him, heavy and warm, full of herself; I want to be that slave, Electra, I want to pull the city around me and to roll myself up in it like a blanket. I will not leave.

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Orestes to Electra, Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
2 months 2 weeks ago
"Young men," said Cæsar, "hear an...

"Young men," said Cæsar, "hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young."

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Cæsar Augustus
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
4 weeks ago
Headlines are icons, not literature.

Headlines are icons, not literature.

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(p. 5)
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 4 weeks ago
If anyone would like to acquire...

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realise that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

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Book III, Chapter 8, "The Great Sin"
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 2 days ago
All the entertainment and talk of...

All the entertainment and talk of history is nothing almost but fighting and killing: and the honour and renown that is bestowed on conquerers (who for the most part are but the great butchers of mankind) farther mislead growing youth, who by this means come to think slaughter the laudible business of mankind, and the most heroick of virtues. By these steps unnatural cruelty is planted in us; and what humanity abhors, custom reconciles and recommends to us, by laying it in the way to honour. Thus, by fashioning and opinion, that comes to be a pleasure, which in itself neither is, nor can be any.

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Sec. 116
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 day ago
While it is true that science...

While it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

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Religion and Science (1935), Ch. IX: Science of Ethics.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 4 weeks ago
We must plan for freedom, and...

We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 21 "An Evaluation of the Prophecy"
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 1 week ago
No artist can develop without increasing...

No artist can develop without increasing his self-knowledge; but self-knowledge supposes a certain preoccupation with the meaning of human life and the destiny of man. A definite set of beliefs - Methodist Christianity, for example - may only be a hindrance to development; but it is not more so than Beckett's refusal to think at all. Shaw says somewhere that all intelligent men must be preoccupied with either religion, politics, or sex. (He seems to attribute T. E. Lawrence's tragedy to his refusal to come to grips with any of them.) It is hard to see how an artist could hope to achieve any degree of self-knowledge without being deeply concerned with at least one of the three.

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p. 197
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 4 weeks ago
As for us, my little friend,...

As for us, my little friend, we entered [the Communist Party] because we were tired of dying of hunger.

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Act 3, sc. 2
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
1 month 3 days ago
I have only one real message...

I have only one real message in this lecture, and that is: consciousness is a biological phenomenon, like photosynthesis, digestion, mitosis-you know all the biological phenomena-and once you accept that, most, if not all about the hard problems of consciousness simply evaporate.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 1 day ago
For as soon as the distribution...

For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic and must remain so if he does not wish to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.

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Vol. 1, Part 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months ago
There is a freemasonry among the...

There is a freemasonry among the dull by which they recognize and are sociable with the dull, as surely as a correspondent tact in men of genius.

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1827
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 1 day ago
A general State education is a...

A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.

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Ch. V: Applications
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 weeks 5 days ago
A life of action, if it...

A life of action, if it is to be useful, must be a life of compromise. But speculation admits of no compromise. A public-man is often under the necessity of consenting to measures which he dislikes, lest he should endanger the success of measures which he thinks of vital importance.

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War of the Succession in Spain', The Edinburgh Review (January 1833), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. II (1843), p. 91
Philosophical Maxims
Parmenides
Parmenides
2 months 2 weeks ago
Never will this prevail, that the...

Never will this prevail, that the things that are not are - bar your thought from this road of inquiry.

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Frag. B 7.1-2, quoted by Plato, Sophist, 237a
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 day ago
I should like to believe my...

I should like to believe my people's religion, which was just what I could wish, but alas, it is impossible. I have really no religion, for my God, being a spirit shown merely by reason to exist, his properties utterly unknown, is no help to my life. I have not the parson's comfortable doctrine that every good action has its reward, and every sin is forgiven. My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.

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Greek Exercises (1888), written two days after his sixteenth birthday.
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months ago
Who lives longer? the man who...

Who lives longer? the man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or a man who lives on roast beef, water and potatoes 'till 95? One passes his 24 months in eternity. All the years of the beefeater are lived only in time.

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The Shortcut: 20 Stories To Get You From Here To There (2006) by Kevin A Fabiano, p. 179
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 1 day ago
It would be worthy of the...

It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the Chinese, the Hindus, the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind. The New Testament is still, perhaps, too much on the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and comparison might help to liberalize the faith of men. This is a work which Time will surely edit, reserved to crown the labors of the printing-press. This would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which let the missionaries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
To all my friends...
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Main Content / General
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 4 weeks ago
In some places the metropolis makes...

In some places the metropolis makes do with paying a clique of feudal overlords; in others, it has fabricated a fake bourgeoisie of colonized subjects in a system of divide and rule; elsewhere, it has killed two birds with one stone: the colony is both settlement and exploitation.

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p. xlvi
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 1 day ago
We scarce ever had a prince,...

We scarce ever had a prince, who by fraud, or violence, had not made some infringement on the constitution. We scarce ever had a parliament which knew, when it attempted to set limits to the royal authority, how to set limits to its own. Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils. Our boasted liberty sometimes trodden down, sometimes giddily set up, and ever precariously fluctuating and unsettled; it has only been kept alive by the blasts of continual feuds, wars, and conspiracies.

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Philosophical Maxims
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