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Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
I considerd a general War against...

I considerd a general War against Jacobins and Jacobinism, as the only possible chance of saving Europe, (and England as included in Europe) from a truly frightful revolution. ... It is my Protest against the delusion, by which some have been taught to look upon this Jacobin contest at home as an ordinary party squabble about place or Patronage; and to regard this Jacobin War abroad as a common War about Trade, or Territorial Boundaries, or about a political Balance of power among Rival or jealous States.

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Letter to the Duke of Portland (29 September 1793), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.)
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 1 week ago
In ease of body and peace...

In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.

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Chap. I.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
Music is the poor man's Parnassus....

Music is the poor man's Parnassus.

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Poetry and Imagination
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
I feel like that intellectual but...

I feel like that intellectual but plain-looking lady who was warmly complimented on her beauty. In accepting his Nobel Prize, in December 1950; Russell denied that he had contributed anything in particular to literature.

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Quoted in LIFE, Editorials: "A great mind is still annoying and adorning our age", 26 May 1952
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 3 weeks ago
For every man the world is...

For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 week 2 days ago
The greatest service which can be...

The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add an useful plant to its culture; especially, a bread grain; next in value to bread is oil.

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Thomas Jefferson, In Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies from the Papers of T. Jefferson (1829), Vol. 1, 144
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
They made me take cod liver...

They made me take cod liver oil: that is the height of luxury: a medicine to make you hungry while the others, in the street, would have sold themselves for a beefsteak. I saw them passing my window with their signs: "Give me bread".

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Act 3, sc. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 1 day ago
Suppose ye that I am come...

Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And he said also to the people, When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it is. And when ye see the south wind blow, ye say, There will be heat; and it cometh to pass. Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time? Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?

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12:51-57 (KJV) Variant translation of 12:57: Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 week ago
Communism... is the genuine resolution of...

Communism... is the genuine resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man; it is the true resolution of the conflict between existence and essence, objectification and self-affirmation, freedom and necessity, individual and species. It is the riddle of history solved and knows itself as the solution.

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Private Property and Communism, p. 43.
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 weeks 3 days ago
To preserve the life…

To preserve the life of citizens, is the greatest virtue in the father of his country.

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The quote is from a Roman tragedy Octavia; Act 2, Line 444, where Seneca advises Nero against carrying out his tyrannical plans. Seneca's attribution to the play is generally discredited by modern scholarship.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
2 weeks 6 days ago
Profound love demands a deep conception...

Profound love demands a deep conception and out of this develops reverence for the mystery of life. It brings us close to all beings, to the poorest and smallest as well as all others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
6 days ago
In your actions, don't procrastinate. In...

In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business.

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VIII. 51:209
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 1 week ago
As a rule, begin my lectures...

As a rule, begin my lectures on Scientific Method by telling my students that scientific method does not exist. ...having been ...the one and only professor of this non-existent subject within the British Commonwealth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 1 week ago
When shall we see poets born?...

When shall we see poets born? After a time of disasters and great misfortunes, when harrowed nations begin to breathe again. And then, shaken by the terror of such spectacles, imaginations will paint things entirely strange to those who have not witnessed them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
6 days ago
All things are interwoven with one...

All things are interwoven with one another; a sacred bond unites them; there is scarcely one thing that is isolated from another. Everything is coordinated, everything works together in giving form to one universe. The world-order is a unity made up of multiplicity: God is one, pervading all things; all being is one, all law is one (namely, the common reason which all thinking persons possess) and all truth is one- if, as we believe, there can be but one path to perfection for beings that are alike in kind and reason.

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VII. 9, trans. Maxwell Staniforth
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 week 2 days ago
I strive to discover how to...

I strive to discover how to signal my companions before I die, how to give them a hand, how to spell out for them in time one complete word at least, to tell them what I think this procession is, and toward what we go. And how necessary it is for all of us together to put our steps and hearts in harmony. To say in time a simple word to my companions, a password, like conspirators. Yes, the purpose of Earth is not life, it is not man. Earth has existed without these, and it will live on without them. They are but the ephemeral sparks of its violent whirling. Let us unite, let us hold each other tightly, let us merge our hearts, let us create - so long as the warmth of this earth endures, so long as no earthquakes, cataclysms, icebergs or comets come to destroy us - let us create for Earth a brain and a heart, let us give a human meaning to the superhuman struggle. This anguish is our second duty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
4 months 4 weeks ago
Time is a game played beautifully...

Time is a game played beautifully by children.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
3 weeks 3 days ago
It is a fact that Mussolini...

It is a fact that Mussolini entered the scene of world politics as an ally of the democracies, while Lenin entered it as a virtual ally of imperial Germany.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 5 days ago
Today the theory of evolution is...

Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun, but the full implications of Darwin's revolution have yet to be widely realized.

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Ch. 1. Why Are People?
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 1 week ago
For the philosophy which is so...

For the philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books; it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos. ...I have heard friends and colleagues try to popularize philosophy... but they soon grew dry, and then technical, and the results were only partially encouraging. So my enterprise is a bold one. The founder of pragmatism... gave... lectures... with that very word in its title,-flashes of brilliant light relieved against Cimmerian darkness! None of us... understood all that he said-yet here I stand making a very similar venture. ...There is... a curious fascination in hearing deep things talked about, even though neither we nor the disputants understand them. We get the problematic thrill, we feel the presence of the vastness.

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Lecture I, The Present Dilemma in Philosophy
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month 2 weeks ago
Confusion of sapience with sentience can...

Confusion of sapience with sentience can be ethically catastrophic.

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Social Media Unsorted Postings 2016
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
1 week 2 days ago
National defense through war always involves...

National defense through war always involves some degree of national defeat. This paradox has been with us from the very beginning of our republic. Militarization in defense of freedom reduces the freedom of the defenders. There is a fundamental inconsistency between war and freedom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
Self-trust is the first secret of...

Self-trust is the first secret of success.

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Success
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
3 months ago
The cry of equality pulls everyone...

The cry of equality pulls everyone down.

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Quoted in The Observer September 13, 1987.
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 1 week ago
While all these are disturbed and...

While all these are disturbed and divided by the multifarious objects to which their thoughts must be applied, the Philosopher pursues, in solitary silence and in unbroken concentration of mind, his single and undeviating course towards the Good, the Beautiful, and the True; and that is his daily labour, to which others can only resort at times for rest and refreshment after toil.

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P. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 3 weeks 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
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
You had that action and counteraction...

You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.

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Volume iii, p. 277
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
Superstition is the religion of feeble...

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 2 weeks ago
The whole world is in some...

The whole world is in some ways better than it's ever been in the past. And, indeed, I think for many people the meaning of their lives really depends on that belief. If you strip out that belief in progress, if you start thinking of the world in the way in which the ancient pre-Christian Europeans did, or the Buddhists and the Hindus or the Taoists of China do, many people think that's a kind of despair. I don't know how many times I've been told "If I thought that, John, I wouldn't get up in the morning" and "If I agreed with you, John, that history had no pattern of that kind, I wouldn't get up in the morning." I said, "Well, stay in bed a bit longer, you might find a better reason for getting up."

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Quoted in John Gray at the Writers' Festival, part 1," The Philosopher's Zone, a discussion with Alan Saunders on ABC Radio National
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 5 days ago
When I happen to be satisfied...

When I happen to be satisfied with everything, even God and myself, I immediately react like the man who, on a brilliant day, torments himself because the sun is bound to explode in a few billion years.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 1 week ago
Religion...is a man's total reaction upon...

Religion...is a man's total reaction upon life.

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Lecture II, "Circumscription of the Topic"
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
3 months 1 day ago
Poetry is one of the destinies...

Poetry is one of the destinies of speech.... One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language.

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Introduction, sect. 2
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
3 months ago
Even the eye that is artificially...

Even the eye that is artificially trained to see color as color, apart from things that colors qualify, cannot shut out the resonances and transfers of value.

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p. 126
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month ago
War is a quarrel between two...

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other.

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Quoted by Emma Goldman in her essay, "Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty", chapter five of Anarchism and Other Essays (2nd revised edition, 1911).
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 3 weeks ago
The march, as ever, is toward...

The march, as ever, is toward the future, and he who marches is getting there, even though he march walking backwards. And who knows if that is not the better way!...

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
6 months 1 week ago
Diogenes...
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Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 week ago
There are no passengers on Spaceship...

There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.

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Statement in 1965, in reference to Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963) by Buckminster Fuller
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 3 weeks ago
The very proclaimers of "America first"...

The very proclaimers of "America first" have long before this betrayed the fundamental principles of real Americanism...the other truly great Americans who aimed to make of this country a haven of refuge, who hoped that all the disinherited and oppressed people in coming to these shores would give character, quality and meaning to the country.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
And having looked to Government for...

And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 1 week ago
There are Plebes in all classes....

There are Plebes in all classes.

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As quoted by Julien Coupat in Interview with Julien Coupat, 2009
Philosophical Maxims
George Berkeley
George Berkeley
3 months 2 weeks ago
Since therefore, as well those degrees...

Since therefore, as well those degrees of heat that are not painful, as those that are, can exist in a thinking substance; may we not conclude that external bodies are absolutely incapable of any degree of heat whatsoever?

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Philonous to Hylas. Hylas replies with, "So it seems".
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 4 weeks ago
Think to yourself….

Think to yourself that every day is your last; the hour to which you do not look forward will come as a welcome surprise.

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Book I, epistle iv, line 13-14
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 months 4 weeks ago
The pathfinders of modern thought did...

The pathfinders of modern thought did not derive what is good from the law. ... Their role in history was not that of adapting their words and actions to the text of old documents or generally accepted doctrines: they themselves created the documents and brought about the acceptance of their doctrines.

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p. 33.
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
2 months 3 weeks ago
What the horrors of war are,...

What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine - they are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine - they are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior, jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.

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Letter (5 May 1855), published in Florence Nightingale : An Introduction to Her Life and Family (2001), edited by Lynn McDonald, p. 141
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 1 day ago
Hear, and understand: Not that which...

Hear, and understand: Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.

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15:10-11 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 2 weeks ago
His Mohammed, as has been said,...

His Mohammed, as has been said, commands that ruling is to be done by the sword, and in his Koran the sword is the commonest and noblest work. Thus the Turk is, in truth, nothing but a murderer or highwayman, as his deeds show before men's eyes.

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On War against the Turk
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 2 days ago
I think that New York is...

I think that New York is not the cultural center of America, but the business and administrative center of American culture.

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BBC radio interview, The Listener
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
The sublime is excited in me...

The sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, Obey thyself.

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p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 1 week ago
War is not a courtesy but...

War is not a courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game. As it is now, war is the favourite pastime of the idle and frivolous.

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Bk. X, ch. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 1 day ago
Bourgeois political economy ... never gets...

Bourgeois political economy ... never gets to see man who is its real subject. It disregards the essence of man and his history and is thus in the profoundest sense not a 'science of people' but of non-people and of an inhuman world of objects and commodities.

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"The Foundations of Historical Materialism," Studies in Critical Philosophy (1972), p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
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