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Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 1 week ago
Every rebellion implies some kind of...

Every rebellion implies some kind of unity.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
5 months 2 weeks ago
Good individual goals...
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Main Content / General
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 2 days ago
But it isn't just a matter...

But it isn't just a matter of faith, but of faith and works. Each is necessary. For the demons also believe you heard the apostle and tremble (Jas 2:19); but their believing doesn't do them any good. Faith alone is not enough, unless works too are joined to it: Faith working through love (Gal 5:6), says the apostle.

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16A:11:2
Philosophical Maxims
Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan
1 week 4 days ago
Let us pardon him his hope...

Let us pardon him his hope of a vain apocalypse, and of a second coming in great triumph upon the clouds of heaven. Perhaps these were the errors of others rather than his own; and if it be true that he himself shared the general illusion, what matters it, since his dream rendered him strong against death, and sustained him in a struggle to which he might otherwise have been unequal?

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Ch. 17.
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
2 months 1 week ago
Toute notre civilisation est aphrodisiaque Sex-appeal...

Sex-appeal is the keynote of our whole civilization.

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Chapter IV
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 weeks ago
Nothing less will content me, than...

Nothing less will content me, than whole America.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 1 week ago
"What on earth prompted you to...

"What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this?""I don't know. My... my code of morals, perhaps.""Your code of morals. What code, if I may ask?" "Comprehension."

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
Thee will find out in time...

Thee will find out in time that I have a great love of professing vile sentiments, I don't know why, unless it springs from long efforts to avoid priggery.

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Letter to Alys Pearsall Smith (1894). Smith was a Quaker, thus the archaic use of "Thee" in this and other letters to her.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is certainly not a matter...

It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial.

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F154
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 2 weeks ago
There are many people who reach...

There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys; they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked out the sum for themselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gottlob frege
Gottlob frege
2 months 1 week ago
The historical approach, with its aim...

The historical approach, with its aim of detecting how things began and arriving from these origins at a knowledge of their nature, is certainly perfectly legitimate; but it also has its limitations. If everything were in continual flux, and nothing maintained itself fixed for all time, there would no longer be any possibility of getting to know about the world, and everything would be plunged into confusion.

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Translation J. L. Austin (Oxford, 1950) as quoted by Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (1972) Vol. 1, p. 55.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 weeks ago
There are limits beyond which your...

There are limits beyond which your folly will not carry you. I am glad of that. In fact, I am relieved.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 1 week ago
Ignorance, to a scientist, is an...

Ignorance, to a scientist, is an itch that begs to be pleasurably scratched. Ignorance, if you are a theologian, is something to be washed away by shamelessly making something up.

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The Intellectual and Moral Courage of Atheism
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 1 week ago
Why callest thou me good? there...

Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.

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19:17 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 day ago
Withdraw into yourself…

Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach.

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Line 8.
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 3 weeks ago
Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt...

Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.

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Book Three, Chapter XI.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
Quite often a man goes on...

Quite often a man goes on for years imagining that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him.

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Pt. I, ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Proclus
Proclus
3 months ago
Again, Amyclas the Heracleotean, one of...

Again, Amyclas the Heracleotean, one of Plato's familiars, and Menæchmus, the disciple, indeed, of Eudoxus, but conversant with Plato, and his brother Dinostratus, rendered the whole of geometry as yet more perfect. But Theudius, the Magnian, appears to have excelled, as well in mathematical disciplines, as in the rest of philosophy. For he constructed elements egregiously, and rendered many particulars more universal. Besides, Cyzicinus the Athenian, flourished at the same period, and became illustrious in other mathematical disciplines, but especially in geometry. These, therefore, resorted by turns to the Academy, and employed themselves in proposing common questions.

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Ch. IV.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 weeks ago
One cannot too soon forget his...

One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon them is to add to the offense. Repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by something better, which is as free and original as if they had not been.

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January 9, 1842
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 3 weeks ago
Man is always partial and is...

Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.

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F 78
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 3 days ago
Man is said to be a...

Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason. More often I have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. Perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly - but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the second degree.

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Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
1 week 3 days ago
To this end they make a...

To this end they make a shield of their hypocritical zeal for religion. They go about invoking the Bible, which they would have minister to their deceitful purposes. Contrary to the sense of the Bible and the intention of the holy Fathers, if I am not mistaken, they would extend such authorities until even in purely physical matters - where faith is not involved - they would have us altogether abandon reason and the evidence of our senses in favor of some biblical passage, though under the surface meaning of its words this passage may contain a different sense.

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Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
2 months 3 weeks ago
Of the eternal incorporeal substance nothing...

Of the eternal incorporeal substance nothing is changed, is formed or deformed, but there always remains only that thing which cannot be a subject of dissolution, since it is not possible that it be a subject of composition, and therefore, either of itself or by accident, it cannot be said to die.

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As translated by Arthur Imerti
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
Although the medium is the message,...

Although the medium is the message, the controls go beyond programming. The restraints are always directed to the "content," which is always another medium. The content of the press is literary statement, as the content of the book is speech, and the content of the movie is the novel. So the effects of radio are quite independent of its programming.

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(p. 267)
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is a mistake to classify...

It is a mistake to classify the passions as lawful and unlawful, so as to yield to the one and refuse the other. All alike are good if we are their masters; all alike are bad if we abandon ourselves to them. Nature forbids us to extend our relations beyond the limits of our strength; reason forbids us to want what we cannot get, conscience forbids us, not to be tempted, but to yield to temptation. To feel or not to feel a passion is beyond our control, but we can control ourselves. Every sentiment under our own control is lawful; those which control us are criminal. A man is not guilty if he loves his neighbour's wife, provided he keeps this unhappy passion under the control of the law of duty; he is guilty if he loves his own wife so greatly as to sacrifice everything to that love.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
The soul active sees absolute truth;...

The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates.

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par. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 6 days ago
He who feared….

He who feared that he would not succeed sat still.

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Book I, epistle xvii, line 37
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 2 weeks ago
Somebody ought to make a historical...

Somebody ought to make a historical study of the relations between theology and corporal punishment in childhood. I have a theory that, wherever little boys and girls are systematically flagellated, the victims grow up to think of God as - 'Wholly Other'... A people's theology reflects the state of its children's bottoms. Look at the Hebrews - enthusiastic child-beaters. And so were all good Christians in the Age of Faith. Hence Jehovah, hence Original Sin and the infinitely offended Father of Roman and Protestant orthodoxy. Whereas among Buddhists and Hindus education has always been nonviolent. No laceration of little buttocks - therefore Tat tvam asi, thou art That, mind from Mind is not divided.... Major premise: God is Wholly Other. Minor premise: man is totally depraved. Conclusion: Do to your children's bottoms what was done to yours, what your Heavenly Father has been doing to the collective bottom of humanity ever since the Fall: whip, whip, whip!

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 2 weeks ago
Editor Preface In this book, originating...

Editor Preface In this book, originating in the year 1848, the requirement for being a Christian is forced up by the pseudonymous author to the supreme ideality. Yet the requirement should indeed be stated, presented, and heard. From the Christian point of view, there ought to be no scaling down of the requirement, nor suppression of it-instead of a personal admission and confession. The requirement should be heard-and I understand what is said as spoken to me alone-so that I might learn not only to resort to grace but to resort to it in relation to the use of grace.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 6 days ago
Follow the seasons of Ha,Ride in...

Follow the seasons of Ha,Ride in the state carriage of Yau,Wear the ceremonial cap of Chan,Let the music be the Shiu with its pantomimes.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
1 week 1 day ago
He who exerts his mind to...

He who exerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature.

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7A:1, as translated by Wing-tsit Chan in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (1963), p. 62
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 1 week ago
When the imagination sleeps, words are...

When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning: a deaf population absent-mindedly registers the condemnation of a man. ... there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week ago
Books-there is a good kind of...

Books-there is a good kind of a book and a bad kind of a book. I am not to assume that you are all ill acquainted with this; but I may remind you that it is a very important consideration at present. It casts aside altogether the idea that people have that if they are reading any book-that if an ignorant man is reading any book, he is doing rather better than nothing at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
3 months 6 days ago
Now as of old the gods...

Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and useless. These, now as of old, are not gifts of the gods: men stumble into them themselves because of their own blindness and folly.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
America is 100% 18th Century. The...

America is 100% 18th Century. The 18th century had chucked out the principle of metaphor and analogy - the basic fact that as A is to B so is C to D. AB:CD. It can see AB relations. But relations in four terms are still verboten. This amounts to deep occultation of nearly all human thought for the USA.

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Letter to Ezra Pound
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 week 3 days ago
If... it be supposed that another...

If... it be supposed that another way of measuring time is adopted... enunciation of the law would be... translated into another language... much less simple. So that the definition implicitly adopted by the astronomers may be summed up..: Time should be so defined that the equations of mechanics may be as simple as possible... [i.e.,] there is not one way of measuring time more true... only more convenient.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
1 week 2 days ago
I do not know what postmodern...

I do not know what postmodern is and how it differs from the premodern, nor do I feel that I ought to know.

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"Modernity on Endless Trial"
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 2 weeks ago
Through the emancipation of private property...

Through the emancipation of private property from the community, the State has become a separate entity, beside and outside civil society; but is it nothing more than the form of organization which the bourgeois necessarily adopt both for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests.

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Part One The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 187
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 months 2 days ago
What appears as the positive is...

What appears as the positive is essentially the negative, i.e. the thing that is to be criticized.

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p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
4 weeks 1 day ago
A city that outdistances Man's walking...

A city that outdistances Man's walking powers is a trap for Man. It threatens to become a prison from which he cannot escape unless he has mechanical means of transport, the thoroughfares for carrying these, and the purchasing power for commanding the use of artificial means of communication.

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"Has Man's Metropolitan Environment Any Precedents?", Ekistics, vol. 22, no. 133 (December 1966) pp. 385-7
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
I think no virtue goes with...

I think no virtue goes with size; The reason of all cowardice Is, that men are overgrown, And, to be valiant, must come down To the titmouse dimension.

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The Titmouse, st. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan
1 week 4 days ago
Nature has made a race….

Nature has made a race of workers; that is the Chinese race, with a marvelous dexterity of hand and hardly any feeling of honor; govern this race with justice by exacting from them through the competence of such government an ample dowry to the conquering race; the subordinate race will be satisfied; a race of workers of the earth, such is the Negro; let us be for him good and human, and everything will be in order -- a race of masters and soldiers, that is the European race.

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94
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 2 weeks ago
The end cannot justify the means...

The end cannot justify the means for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.

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Ch. 1, p. 10 [2012 reprint]
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week ago
It is no longer the moral,...

It is no longer the moral, religious, spiritual condition of the people that is our concern, but their physical, practical, economical condition, as regulated by public laws.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
3 months 2 weeks ago
That man should think of God...

That man should think of God as nothingness must at first sight seem astonishing, must appear to us a most peculiar idea. But, considered more closely, this determination means that God is absolutely nothing determined. He is the Undetermined; no determinateness of any kind pertains to God; He is the Infinite. This is equivalent to saying that God is the negation of all particularity.

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Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with a work on the proofs of the existence of God. Vol 2 Translated from the 2d German ed. 1895 Ebenezer Brown Speirs 1854-1900, and J Burdon Sanderson p. 51
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 1 week ago
Nothing is harder to understand than...

Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 2 weeks ago
To this I answer: That force...

To this I answer: That force is to be opposed to nothing, but to unjust and unlawful force. Whoever makes any opposition in any other case, draws on himself a just condemnation, both from God and man...

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Second Treatise of Government, Ch. XVIII, sec. 204
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 2 weeks ago
Whensoever therefore the legislative shall transgress...

Whensoever therefore the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society.

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Second Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. XIX, sec. 222
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 1 week ago
Is it not altogether absurd that,...

Is it not altogether absurd that, under actual circumstances, the average man does not feel spontaneously, and without being preached at, an ardent enthusiasm for those sciences and the related ones of biology?... Every day furnishes a new invention which this average man utilises. Every day produces a new anesthetic or vaccine from which this average man benefits. ... How is it, nevertheless, that there is no sign of the masses imposing on themselves any sacrifice of money or attention in order to endow science more worthily? Far from this being the case, the post-war period has converted the man of science into a new social pariah.

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Chap.IX: The Primitive and the Technical
Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
2 months 2 days ago
Myth is depoliticized speech. p. 145

Myth is depoliticized speech.

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p. 145
Philosophical Maxims
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