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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
In science men have discovered an...

In science men have discovered an activity of the very highest value in which they are no longer, as in art, dependent for progress upon the appearance of continually greater genius, for in science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it.

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Ch. 2: The Place of Science in a Liberal Education
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
2 months 3 weeks ago
Truth is a standard…

Truth is a standard both of itself and of falsity.

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Part II, Prop. XLIII, Scholium
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
3 months ago
Origen, of course, is also a...

Origen, of course, is also a great advocate of the allegorical approach. Yet I think you will have to admit that our modem theologians either despise this method of interpretation or are completely ignorant of it. As a matter of fact they surpass the pagans of antiquity in the subtlety of their distinctions.

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p. 63
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
Everything is nothing, including the consciousness...

Everything is nothing, including the consciousness of nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 1 week ago
The superior man, while there is...

The superior man, while there is anything he has not studied, or while in what he has studied there is anything he cannot understand, Will not intermit his labor. While there is anything he has not inquired about, or anything in what he has inquired about which he does not know, he will not intermit his labor. While there is anything which he has not reflected on, or anything in what he has reflected on which he does not apprehend, he will not intermit his labor. While there is anything which he has not discriminated or his discrimination is not clear, he will not intermit his labor. If there be anything which he has not practiced, or his practice fails in earnestness, he will not intermit his labor. If another man succeed by one effort, he will use a hundred efforts. If another man succeed by ten efforts, he will use a thousand. Let a man proceed in this way, and, though dull, he will surely become intelligent; though weak, he will surely become strong.

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Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
2 months 1 week ago
To Xeniades, who had purchased Diogenes...

To Xeniades, who had purchased Diogenes at the slave market, he said, "Come, see that you obey orders."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 36
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 2 weeks ago
O light! This is the cry...

O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer. Return to Tipasa (1954) Variant translation: In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 4 days ago
One gloomy and pessimistic writer with...

One gloomy and pessimistic writer with a powerful style affects a whole generation of writers, who in turn affect almost every educated person in the country.

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p. 79
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Social and economic...
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Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 1 week ago
The more ideas have become automatic,...

The more ideas have become automatic, instrumentalized, the less does anybody see in them thoughts with a meaning of their own. They are considered things, machines. Language has been reduced to just another tool in the gigantic apparatus of production in modern society.

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pp. 21-22.
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
2 months 2 days ago
Power is the near neighbour of...

Power is the near neighbour of necessity.

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As quoted in Aurea Carmina (8) by Hierocles of Alexandria, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 356
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 month 2 weeks ago
I was still blind, but twinkling...

I was still blind, but twinkling stars did dance Throughout my being's limitless expanse, Nothing had yet drawn close, only at distant stages I found myself, a mere suggestion sensed in past and future ages.

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As quoted in Romantic Vision, Ethical Context: Novalis and Artistic Autonomy (1987) by Géza von Molnár, p. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 3 weeks ago
As the past has ceased to...

As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity. Variant translation: When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.

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Book Four, Chapter VIII
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 2 weeks ago
I mean, a genuinely productive society....

I mean, a genuinely productive society. I mean you could produce plenty of goods without much freedom, but I think the whole sort of creative life of man is ultimately impossible without a considerable measure of individual freedom, of initiative, creation, all these things which we value, and I think value properly, are impossible without a large measure of freedom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 2 weeks ago
Navigation brought man face to face...

Navigation brought man face to face with the uncertainty of destiny, where each is left to himself and every departure might always be the last. The madman on his crazy boat sets sail for the other world, and it is from the other world that he comes when he disembarks. This enforced navigation is both rigorous division and absolute Passage, serving to underline in real and imaginary terms the liminal situation of the mad in medieval society. It was a highly symbolic role, made clear by the mental geography involved, where the madman was confined at the gates of the cities. His exclusion was his confinement, and if he had no prison other than the threshold itself he was still detained at this place of passage. In a highly symbolic position he is placed on the inside of the outside, or vice versa. A posture that is still his today, if we admit that what was once the visible fortress of social order is now the castle of our own consciousness.

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Part One: 1. Stultifera Navis
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 3 weeks ago
Nature has willed that man should,...

Nature has willed that man should, by himself, produce everything that goes beyond the mechanical ordering of his animal existence, and that he should partake of no other happiness or perfection than that which he himself, independently of instinct, has created by his own reason.

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Third Thesis
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 1 week ago
I hear and I forget. I...

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
3 months 1 week ago
A wise man, who puts himself...

A wise man, who puts himself under the government of reason, will be able to receive an injury with calmness, and to treat the person who committed it with lenity; for he will rank injuries among the casual events of life, and will prudently reflect that he can no more stop the natural current of human passions, than he can curb the stormy winds.

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Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
1 month 2 days ago
By necrophilia is meant love for...

By necrophilia is meant love for all that is violence and destruction; the desire to kill; the worship of force; attraction to death, to suicide, to sadism; the desire to transform the organic into the inorganic by means of "order." The necrophile, lacking the necessary qualities to create, in his impotence finds it easy to destroy because for him it serves only one quality: force.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 3 weeks ago
How absurd men are! They never...

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech. Either/Or Part I, Swenson Translation p. 19 Variations include: People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought, which they avoid. People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
True confessions are written with tears...

True confessions are written with tears only. But my tears would drown the world, as my inner fire would reduce it to ashes.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
1 month 1 week ago
Everything is what it is: liberty...

Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 3 weeks ago
Since the great foundation of fear...

Since the great foundation of fear is pain, the way to harden and fortify children against fear and danger is to accustom them to suffer pain. This 'tis possible will be thought, by kind parents, a very unnatural thing towards their children; and by most, unreasonable...

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Sec. 115
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 6 days ago
There are necessities and impossibilities in...

There are necessities and impossibilities in reality which do not obtain in fiction, any more than the law of gravity to which we are subject controls what is represented in a picture. ... It is the same with pure good; for a necessity as strong as gravity condemns man to evil and forbids him any good, or only within the narrowest limits and laboriously obtained and soiled and adulterated with evil. ... The simplicity which makes the fictional good something insipid and unable to hold the attention becomes, in the real good, an unfathomable marvel.

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"Morality and literature," pp. 160-161
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
In fact, contempt for happiness is...

In fact, contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.

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p. 198
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
2 months 3 weeks ago
Complete ignorance with regard to certain...

Complete ignorance with regard to certain matters is perhaps the best thing for children; but let them learn very early what it is impossible to conceal from them permanently. Either their curiosity must never be aroused, or it must be satisfied before the age when it becomes a source of danger. Your conduct towards your pupil in this respect depends greatly on his individual circumstances, the society in which he moves, the position in which he may find himself, etc. Nothing must be left to chance; and if you are not sure of keeping him in ignorance of the difference between the sexes till he is sixteen, take care you teach him before he is ten.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gottlob frege
Gottlob frege
1 month 1 week ago
Being true is different from being...

Being true is different from being taken as true, whether by one or by many or everybody, and in no case is it to be reduced to it. There is no contradiction in something's being true which everybody takes to be false. I understand by 'laws of logic' not psychological laws of takings-to-be-true, but laws of truth. ...If being true is thus independent of being acknowledged by somebody or other, then the laws of truth are not psychological laws: they are boundary stones set in an eternal foundation, which our thought can overflow, but never displace. It is because of this that they have authority for our thought if it would attain truth. They do not bear the relation to thought that the laws of grammar bear to language; they do not make explicit the nature of our human thinking and change as it changes.

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Introduction, Tr. Montgomery Furth
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
All the thoughts of a turtle...

All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle.

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1855
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 2 weeks ago
I appeal to the philosophers of...

I appeal to the philosophers of all countries to unite and never again mention Heidegger or talk to another philosopher who defends Heidegger. This man was a devil. I mean, he behaved like a devil to his beloved teacher, and he has a devilish influence on Germany. ... One has to read Heidegger in the original to see what a swindler he was.

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As quoted in "At 90, and Still Dynamic : Revisiting Sir Karl Popper and Attending His Birthday Party" by Eugene Yue-Ching Ho, in Intellectus 23
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 2 weeks ago
Earth is a ball that is...

Earth is a ball that is over 12,000 kilometres in diameter, and if it were modelled into an object the size of a billiard ball, with all its surface unevenness reproduced exactly to scale, the model would be smoother than an ordinary billiard ball and the ocean would be an all but unnoticeable mist of dampness over 70 percent of its surface.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 4 weeks ago
How many worthy men have we...

How many worthy men have we seen survive their own reputation!

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Book II, Ch. 16. Of Glory
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
If you don't want to explode...

If you don't want to explode with rage, leave your memory alone, abstain from burrowing there.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 4 days ago
I have tried to show how...

I have tried to show how religion, the backbone of civilisation, hardens into a Church that is unacceptable to Outsiders, and the Outsiders - the men who strive to become visionaries - become the Rebels. In our case, the scientific progress that has brought us closer than ever before to conquering the problems of civilisation, has also robbed us of spiritual drive; and the Outsider is doubly a rebel: a rebel against the Established Church , a rebel against the unestablished church of materialism. Yet for all this, he is the real spiritual heir of the prophets, of Jesus and St. Peter, of St. Augustine and Peter Waldo. The purest religion of any age lies in the hands of its spiritual rebels. The twentieth century is no exception.

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p. 320
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 2 weeks ago
Resting on your laurels is as...

Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep.

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p. 35e
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 3 weeks ago
I now saw, that a science...

I now saw, that a science is either deductive or experimental, according as, in the province it deals with, the effects of causes when conjoined, are or are not the sums of the effects which the same causes produce when separate. It followed that politics must be a deductive science. It thus appeared, that both Macaulay and my father were wrong; the one in assimilating the method of philosophising in politics to the purely experimental method of chemistry; while the other, though right in adopting a deductive method, had made a wrong selection of one, having taken as the type of deduction, not the appropriate process, that of the deductive branches of natural philosophy, but the inappropriate one of pure geometry, which, not being a science of causation at all, does not require or admit of any summing-up of effects.

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(pp. 160-161)
Philosophical Maxims
Ptahhotep
Ptahhotep
2 months 1 week ago
The pleasure is only for a...

The pleasure is only for a little moment, and it [passes] like a dream, and a man at the end thereof finds death through knowing it.

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Maxim no. 18. Translated by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, Teaching Of Amenem Apt Son Of Kanekht (London: Martin Hopkinson and Company Ltd, 1924) p. 58
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
2 months 2 weeks ago
If it recedes one day, leaving...

If it recedes one day, leaving behind its works and signs on the shores of our civilization, the structuralist invasion might become a question or the historian of ideas, or perhaps even an object. But the historian would be deceived if he came to this pass: by the very act of considering the structuralist invasion as an object he would forget its meaning and would forget that what is at stake, first of all, is an adventure of vision, a conversion of the way of putting questions to any object posed before us, to historical objects-his own- in particular. And, unexpectedly among these, the literary objects.

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Force and Signification
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 1 week ago
When one cultivates to the utmost...

When one cultivates to the utmost the principles of his nature, and exercises them on the principle of reciprocity, he is not far from the path. What you do not like when done to yourself, do not do to others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 4 days ago
It is not honourable to attack...

It is not honourable to attack an enemy without putting yourself at risk.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 3 weeks ago
The following general definition of an...

The following general definition of an animal: a system of different organic molecules that have combined with one another, under the impulsion of a sensation similar to an obtuse and muffled sense of touch given to them by the creator of matter as a whole, until each one of them has found the most suitable position for it shape and comfort.

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No. 51
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 3 weeks ago
The composer reveals the innermost nature...

The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.

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Vol. I, Ch. III, The World As Representation
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 1 week ago
Subjective reason ... is inclined to...

Subjective reason ... is inclined to abandon the fight with religion by setting up two different brackets, one for science and philosophy, and one for institutionalized mythology, thus recognizing both of them. For the philosophy of objective reason there is no such way out. Since it hold to the concept of objective truth, it must take a positive or a negative stand with regard to the content of established religion.

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p. 12.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 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
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
1 month 3 weeks ago
Heroic love is the property of...

Heroic love is the property of those superior natures who are called insane not because they do not know, but because they over-know.

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As quoted in The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), by Miguel de Unamuno, as translated by J. E. Crawford
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 2 weeks ago
It seems to me...

It seems to me that the current political task in a society like ours is to criticize the working of institutions that are apparently the most neutral and independent, to criticize these institutions and attack them in such a way that the political violence that exercises itself obscurely through them becomes manifest, so that one can fight against them.

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Debate with Noam Chomsky, École Supérieure de Technologie à Eindhoven, November 1971
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 2 weeks ago
Probably, the most-often-repeated lesson in history...

Probably, the most-often-repeated lesson in history is that foreigners who are called in to help one side in a civil war take over for themselves. It is a lesson that seems never to be learned despite endless repetition.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 weeks ago
The First [Friend] is the alter...

The First [Friend] is the alter ego, the man who first reveals to you that you are not alone in the world by turning out (beyond hope) to share all your most secret delights. There is nothing to be overcome in making him your friend; he and you join like raindrops on a window. But the Second Friend is the man who disagrees with you about everything... Of course he shares your interests; otherwise he would not become your friend at all. But he has approached them all at a different angle. he has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one... How can he be so nearly right, and yet, invariably, just not right? He is as fascinating (and infuriating) as a woman.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
3 weeks 3 days ago
God created everything by number, weight...

God created everything by number, weight and measure.

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As quoted in Symmetry in Plants (1998) by Roger V. Jean and Denis Barabé, p. xxxvii
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 3 weeks ago
If a workman can conveniently spare...

If a workman can conveniently spare those three halfpence, he buys a pot of porter. If he cannot, he contents himself with a pint, and, as a penny saved is a penny got, he thus gains a farthing by his temperance.

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Chapter II, Part II, Article IV, p. 951.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
He who gives himself entirely to...

He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.

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Philosophical Maxims
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