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Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
2 months 3 weeks ago
Religion holds the solution to all...

Religion holds the solution to all problems of human relationship, whether they are between parents and children or nation and nation. Sooner or later, man has always had to decide whether he worships his own power or the power of God. When threats force him to look at the limitations of his human power, he's often ready to seek his spiritual one. What we need is patience and awe of God's plan in human history!

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In Quote: The Weekly Digest, vol. 38, no. 19 (8 November 1959) p. 13
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 2 weeks ago
It appears... that a work similar...

It appears... that a work similar in its object and general conception to that of Adam Smith, but adapted to the more extended knowledge and improved ideas of the present age, is the kind of contribution which Political Economy at present requires. The Wealth of Nations is in many parts obsolete, and in all, imperfect. Political Economy... has grown up almost from infancy since the time of Adam Smith; and the philosophy of society... has advanced many steps beyond the point at which he left it.

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Preface, 1848
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 3 weeks ago
There can be no freedom in...

There can be no freedom in the large sense of the word, no harmonious development, so long as mercenary and commercial considerations play an important part in the determination of personal conduct.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
3 months 1 week ago
For him who loves labor, there...

For him who loves labor, there is always something to do.

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Maxim 219
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
4 months 1 week ago
Since the communists cannot enter upon...

Since the communists cannot enter upon the decisive struggle between themselves and the bourgeoisie until the bourgeoisie is in power, it follows that it is in the interest of the communists to help the bourgeoisie to power as soon as possible in order the sooner to be able to overthrow it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 1 week ago
I am for the most part...

I am for the most part so convinced that everything is lacking in basis, consequence, justification, that if someone dared to contradict me, even the man I most admire, he would seem to me a charlatan or a fool.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt
1 month 1 week ago
The equation state = politics becomes...

The equation state = politics becomes erroneous and deceptive at exactly the moment when state and society penetrate each other.

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Philosophical Maxims
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman
3 months 3 days ago
How do we remember the parts...

How do we remember the parts of our histories we'd rather forget?

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Repression and revision are always options.
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4 months 1 week ago
I think that the principal and...

I think that the principal and most basic spiritual need of the Russian People is the need for suffering, incessant and unslakeable suffering, everywhere and in everything. I think the Russian People have been infused with this need to suffer from time immemorial. A current of martyrdom runs through their entire history, and it flows not only from external misfortunes and disasters but springs from the very heart of the People themselves. There is always an element of suffering even in the happiness of the Russian People, and without it their happiness is incomplete.

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A Writer's Diary, Vol. 1: 1873-1876 (1994), pp. 161-162
Philosophical Maxims
John Herschel
John Herschel
1 month 3 weeks ago
Time! Time! Time! - we must...

Time! Time! Time! - we must not impugn the Scripture Chronology, but we must interpret it in accordance with whatever shall appear on fair enquiry to be the truth for there cannot be two truths. And really there is scope enough: for the lives of the Patriarchs may as reasonably be extended to 5000 or 50000 years apiece as the days of Creation to as many thousand millions of years.

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Letter to Charles Lyell after being inspired by his Principles of Geology
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
5 months 1 week ago
What should we gain by a...

What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?

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p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 1 week ago
It is no one's privilege to...

It is no one's privilege to despise another. It is only a hard-won right after long experience.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 1 week ago
It is literally true that the...

It is literally true that the toleration of banks of paper discount costs the United States one-half their war taxes; or, in other words, doubles the expenses of every war. Now think but for a moment, what a change of condition that would be, which should save half our war expenses, require but half the taxes, and enthral us in debt but half the time.

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ME 13:364
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
5 months 2 weeks ago
Remorse sleeps...

Remorse sleeps during a prosperous period but wakes up in adversity. 

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Variant translations: Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity. Remorse goes to sleep during a prosperous period and wakes up in adversity.
Philosophical Maxims
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl
1 month 3 weeks ago
This letter, if judged by the...

This letter, if judged by the novelty and profundity of ideas it contains, is perhaps the most substantial piece of writing in the whole literature of mankind.

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Symmetry (1952), quote on p. 138; referring to a letter by Évariste Galois to Auguste Chevalier from May 29, 1832, two days before Galois' death, containing a testamentary summary of Galois' discoveries
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
5 months 2 weeks 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
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
6 days ago
Man ought to be content....
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Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 1 week ago
Modesty is an unnatural attitude, and...

Modesty is an unnatural attitude, and one which is only with difficulty taught to children.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 1 week ago
Where the preamble declares, that coercion...

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

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Referring to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom, in his Autobiography, 1821
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 1 week ago
"If a nation expects to be...

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free," said Jefferson, "it expects what never was and never will be."

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Chapter 4 (p. 34)
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 months 1 week ago
Is not the reason of the...

Is not the reason of the confidence of the positive, critical, experimental scientists, and of the reverent attitude of the crowd towards their doctrines, still the same? At first it seems strange how the theory of evolution (which, like the redemption in theology, serves the majority as a popular expression of the whole new creed) can justify people in their injustice, and it seems as if the scientific theory dealt only with facts and did nothing but observe facts. But that only seems so. It seemed just the same in the case of theological doctrine: theology, it seemed, was only occupied with dogmas and had no relation to people's lives, and it seemed the same with regard to philosophy, which appeared to be occupied solely with transcendental reasonings. But that only seemed so. It was just the same with the Hegelian doctrine on a large scale and with the particular case of the Malthusian teaching.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 4 weeks ago
Everything of this sort is not...

Everything of this sort is not anger, but the semblance of anger, like that of boys who want to beat the ground when they have fallen upon it, and who often do not even know why they are angry, but are merely angry without any reason or having received any injury, yet not without some semblance of injury received, or without some wish to exact a penalty for it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 2 weeks ago
Through failures one becomes intelligent; but...

Through failures one becomes intelligent; but the one who has trained himself in this subject so that he can make others wise through their own failures, has used his intelligence. Ignorance is not stupidity.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 100
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 2 weeks ago
The man who barely abstains from...

The man who barely abstains from violating either the person, or the estate, or the reputation of his neighbours, has surely very little positive merit. He fulfils, however, all the rules of what is peculiarly called justice, and does every thing which his equals can with propriety force him to do, or which they can punish him for not doing. We may often fulfil all the rules of justice by sitting still and doing nothing.

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Section II, Chap. I.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 1 week ago
It is sublime as night and...

It is sublime as night and a breathless ocean. It contains every religious sentiment, all the grand ethics, which visit in turn each noble poetic mind .... It is of no use to put away the book if I trust myself in the woods or in a boat upon the pond. Nature makes a Brahmin of me presently: eternal compensation, unfathomable power, unbroken silence .... This is her creed. Peace, she saith to me, and purity and absolute abandonment - these panaceas expiate all sin and bring you to the beatitude of the Eight Gods.

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Quoted in Nani Ardeshir Palkhivala, India's Priceless Heritage, 1st ed. (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1980) pp. 9-24
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
4 months 2 weeks ago
To disrespec the masses…

To disrespect the masses is moral; to honor them, lawful.

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Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), "Athenaeum Fragments" § 211
Philosophical Maxims
Xunzi
Xunzi
2 months 1 week ago
If an action ... involves little...

If an action ... involves little profit but much righteousness, do it.

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Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2001), p. 263
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
5 months 3 days ago
Man is a universe in little...

Man is a universe in little.

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Freeman (1948), p. 150
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
4 months 1 week ago
Unconscious assumptions or opinions are the...

Unconscious assumptions or opinions are the worst enemy of woman; they can even grow into a positively demonic passion that exasperates and disgusts men, and does the woman herself the greatest injury by gradually smothering the charm and meaning of her femininity and driving it into the background. Such a development naturally ends in profound psychological disunion, in short, in a neurosis.

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P.245
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 1 week ago
Whenever the people are well informed,...

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

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Letter to Richard Price
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 1 week ago
The only thing that isn't worthless:...

The only thing that isn't worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don't.

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(Hays translation) VI, 47
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 month 2 weeks ago
Two equally steep and bold paths...

Two equally steep and bold paths may lead to the same peak. To act as if death did not exist, or to act thinking every minute of death, is perhaps the same thing.

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Ch. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
5 months 4 days ago
Almost as soon as I began...

Almost as soon as I began to study philosophy, I was impressed by the way in which philosophical problems appeared, disappeared, or changed shape, as a result of new assumptions or vocabularies.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
3 months 4 weeks ago
The bourgeoisie is defined as the...

The bourgeoisie is defined as the social class which does not want to be named.

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p. 138
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 1 week ago
It's a bit embarrassing to have...

It's a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'Try to be a little kinder.'

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As quoted in Huston Smith, "Aldous Huxley--A Tribute," The Psychedelic Review, (1964) Vol I, No.3, (Aldous Huxley Memorial Issue), p. 264-5
Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
2 months 3 weeks ago
God may not play dice but...

God may not play dice but he enjoys a good round of Trivial Pursuit every now and again.

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"God"
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 1 week ago
Man's chief difference from the brutes...

Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities - his preeminence over them simply and solely in the number and in the fantastic and unnecessary character of his wants, physical, moral, aesthetic, and intellectual. Had his whole life not been a quest for the superfluous, he would never have established himself as inexpugnably as he has done in the necessary.

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"Reflex Action and Theism"
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 2 weeks ago
The savage in man is never...

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

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September 26, 1859
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 2 weeks ago
In all ages of the world,...

In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty; and it is certain, that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded on fixed reasons of interest and ambition. Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds, on which it is commonly founded; and, by an infallible connexion, which prevails among all kinds of liberty, this privilege can never be enjoyed, at least has never yet been enjoyed, but in a free government.

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Part I, Essay 9: Of The Parties of Great Britain
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 3 days ago
If a man has no...

If a man has no humaneness what can his propriety be like? If a man has no humaneness what can his happiness be like?

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Philosophical Maxims
Antisthenes
Antisthenes
5 months 3 days ago
The ability to hold….

When he was asked what advantage had accrued to him from philosophy, his answer was, "The ability to hold converse with myself."

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§ 4
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 1 week ago
Science does not know its debt...

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

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Poetry and Imagination
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 4 days ago
He who would write heroic poems...

He who would write heroic poems should make his whole life a heroic poem.

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Life of Schiller.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
4 months 6 days ago
Felicity is a continual progress of...

Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter.The cause whereof is that the object of man's desire is not to enjoy once only, and for one instant of time, but to assure forever the way of his future desire. And therefore the voluntary actions and inclinations of all men tend not only to the procuring, but also to the assuring of a contented life, and differ only in the way, which ariseth partly from the diversity of passions in diverse men, and partly from the difference of the knowledge or opinion each one has of the causes which produce the effect desired.

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The First Part, Chapter 11, p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 1 week ago
Half of the human race lives...

Half of the human race lives in manifest obedience to the lunar rhythm; and there is evidence to show that the psychological and therefore the spiritual life, not only of women, but of men too, mysteriously ebbs and flows with the changes of the moon. There are unreasoned joys, inexplicable miseries, laughters and remorses without a cause. Their sudden and fantastic alternations constitute the ordinary weather of our minds. These moods, of which the more gravely numinous may be hypostasized as gods, the lighter, if we will, as hobgoblins and fairies, are the children of the blood and humours. But the blood and humours obey, among many other masters, the changing moon. Touching the soul directly through the eyes and, indirectly, along the dark channels of the blood, the moon is doubly a divinity.

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"Meditation on the Moon"
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 1 week ago
Absurdity destroys the and of the...

Absurdity destroys the and of the enumeration by making impossible the in where the things enumerated would be divided up.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 2 weeks ago
I know of no country in...

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.

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Chapter XV.
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 3 weeks ago
Historical time knows no lasting present.

Historical time knows no lasting present.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 1 week ago
Private profit is often hidden under...

Private profit is often hidden under a careful coating of great patriotism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 2 weeks ago
The spurious axioms of the third...

The spurious axioms of the third kind from conditions proper to the subject whence they are transferred rashly to the object are plentiful, not, as in those of the Second Class, because the only way to the intellectual concept lies through the sensuous data, but because only by aid of the latter can the concept be applied to that which is given by experience, that is, can we know whether something is contained under a certain intellectual concept or not. To this class belongs the threadbare one of the schools: whatever exists contingently does at some time not exist. This spurious principle springs from the poverty of the intellect, having insight frequently into the nominal, rarely into the real, marks of contingency or necessity.

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Philosophical Maxims
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