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Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 weeks ago
Yes, I am so free...

Yes, I am so free. And what a superb absence is my soul.

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Orestes, Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 2 weeks ago
On condition that you protect my...

On condition that you protect my rights, I will protect your rights. How, then, does some party obtain the right to claim the protection of the other? Evidently, by actually protecting the rights of the other. But if this is so, no party will ever obtain a strictly legal claim to the protection of the other.

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P. 220
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 2 weeks ago
Logic teaches…

Logic teaches us that on such and such a road we are sure of not meeting an obstacle; it does not tell us which is the road that leads to the desired end. For this, it is necessary to see the end from afar, and the faculty which teaches us to see is intuition. Without it, the geometrician would be like a writer well up in grammar but destitute of ideas.

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Part II. Ch. 2 : Mathematical Definitions and Education, p. 130
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 months 2 days ago
Women dream till they have no...

Women dream till they have no longer the strength to dream; those dreams against which they so struggle, so honestly, vigorously, and conscientiously, and so in vain, yet which are their life, without which they could not have lived; those dreams go at last. All their plans and visions seem vanished, and they know not where; gone, and they cannot recall them. They do not even remember them. And they are left without the food of reality or of hope. Later in life, they neither desire nor dream, neither of activity, nor of love, nor of intellect. The last often survives the longest. They wish, if their experiences would benefit anybody, to give them to someone. But they never find an hour free in which to collect their thoughts, and so discouragement becomes ever deeper and deeper, and they less and less capable of undertaking anything.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 3 weeks ago
Do you know that ages will...

Do you know that ages will pass and mankind will proclaim in its wisdom and science that there is no crime and, therefore no sin, but that there are only hungry people. "Feed them first and then demand virtue of them!" - that is what they will inscribe on their banner which they will raise against you and which will destroy your temple.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
4 months 3 weeks ago
He who dares not offend cannot...

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

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24 April 1776, The Forester's Letters", Letter III: To Cato, Pennsylvania Journal
Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
2 weeks 3 days ago
The mind, like the body, has...

The mind, like the body, has its contagious diseases and its scurvy. …We catch everything from those with whom we come in contact; their gestures, their accent, etc.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 3 weeks 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
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 2 weeks ago
It is an odd fact that...

It is an odd fact that anyone who wishes to start a war must always make it appear that he is fighting in a just cause even if the real motive is naked aggression. Fortunately for the would-be aggressor, a "just cause" is very easy to find.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 4 weeks ago
Who then to frail mortality shall...

Who then to frail mortality shall trust But limns the water, or but writes in dust.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 3 weeks ago
The whole life of an American...

The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.

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Chapter XVIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
1 month 2 weeks ago
Whence do you have it that...

Whence do you have it that the terrestrial globe is so heavy? For my part, either I do not know what heaviness is, or the terrestrial globe is neither heavy nor light, as likewise all other globes of the universe. Heaviness to me (and I believe to Nature) is that innate tendency by which a body resists being moved from its natural place and by which, when forcibly removed therefrom, it spontaneously returns there. Thus a bucketful of water raised on high and set free, returns to the sea; but who will say that the same water remains heavy in the sea, when being set free there, does not move?

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 2 weeks ago
Humanity may endure the loss of...

Humanity may endure the loss of everything: all its possessions may be torn away without infringing its true dignity; - all but the possibility of improvement.

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"The Vocation of the Scholar" (1794), as translated by William Smith, in The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889), Vol. I, Lecture IV, p. 188.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 3 weeks ago
The circulation of commodities is the...

The circulation of commodities is the original precondition of the circulation of money.

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Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 107.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 1 week ago
Only after Winter comes do we...

Only after Winter comes do we know that the pine and the cypress are the last to fade.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 weeks ago
Great ages of innovation are the...

Great ages of innovation are the ages in which entire cultures are junked or scrapped.

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(p. 309)
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 1 week ago
All living souls welcome whatsoever they...

All living souls welcome whatsoever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.

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Ch. 3, P. 62
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
4 months 1 week 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
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 5 days ago
In the first place for over...

In the first place for over two centuries religion has been on the defensive, and on a weak defensive. The result of the repetition of this undignified retreat, during many generations, has at last almost entirely destroyed the intellectual authority of religious thinkers. Consider this contrast: when Darwin or Einstein proclaim theories which modify our ideas, it is a triumph for science. We do not go about saying that there is another defeat for science, because its old ideas have been abandoned. We know that another step of scientific insight has been gained.Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development.

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Ch. 12: "Religion and Science", p. 263
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 5 days ago
To the rational being only the...

To the rational being only the irrational is unendurable, but the rational is endurable.

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Variant translation: To a reasonable creature, that alone is insupportable which is unreasonable; but everything reasonable may be supported. Book I, ch. 2,1.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 2 weeks ago
Is it surprising that prisons resemble...

Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?

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Discipline and Punish (1977) as translated by Alan Sheridan, p. 228
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
The more I reflect on it,...

The more I reflect on it, the more I must admire how completely nature had taught him; how completely he was devoted to his work, to the task of his life, and content to let all pass by unheeded that had not relation to this. It is a singular fact, for example, that though a man of such openness and clearness, he had never, I believe, read three pages of Burns's poems. Not even when all about him became noisy and enthusiastic, I the loudest, on that matter, did he feel it worth while to renew his investigation of it, or once turn his face towards it. The poetry he liked (he did not call it poetry) was truth, and the wisdom of reality. Burns, indeed, could have done nothing for him. As high a greatness hung over his world as over that of Burns - the ever-present greatness of the Infinite itself. Neither was he, like Burns, called to rebel against the world, but to labor patiently at his task there, uniting the possible with the necessary to bring out the real, wherein also lay an ideal.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 2 days ago
Concern should drive us into action...

Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression.

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The Collected Works of Karen Horney‎ (1957) by Karen Horney, p. 154: "We may feel genuinely concerned about world conditions, though such a concern should drive us into action and not into a depression."
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 2 weeks ago
Big industry, competition and generally the...

Big industry, competition and generally the individualistic organization of production have become a fetter which it must and will shatter.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
3 weeks ago
Every word is an adamantine shell...

Every word is an adamantine shell which encloses a great explosive force. To discover its meaning you must let it burst inside you like a bomb and in this way liberate the soul which it imprisons.

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Massacre, Ch. 10, p. 88
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 3 weeks ago
Knowledge can in part be set...

Knowledge can in part be set aside, and one can then go further in order to collect new; the natural scientist can set aside insects and flowers and then go further, but if the existing person sets aside the decision in existence, it is eo ipso lost, and he is changed.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 5 days ago
Anyone can hold....
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Main Content / General
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 3 weeks ago
Deep within every human being there...

Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household. One keeps this anxiety at a distance by looking at the many round about who are related to him as kin and friends, but the anxiety is still there, nevertheless, and one hardly dares think of how he would feel if all this were taken away.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
I warmly second the advice of...

I warmly second the advice of the wisest of men-"Don't be ambitious; don't be at all too desirous to success; be loyal and modest." Cut down the proud towering thoughts that you get into you, or see they be pure as well as high. There is a nobler ambition than the gaining of all California would be, or the getting of all the suffrages that are on the planet just now.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
3 months ago
It is at work everywhere, functioning...

It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id. Everywhere it is machines - real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections. from Anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia,

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p. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 2 weeks ago
I was looking at my furniture,...

I was looking at my furniture, not as the utilitarian who has to sit on chairs, to write at desks and tables, and not as the cameraman or scientific recorder, but as the pure aesthete whose concern is only with forms and their relationships within the field of vision or the picture space. But as I looked, this purely aesthetic, Cubist's-eye view gave place to what I can only describe as the sacramental vision of reality. I was back where I had been when I was looking at the flowers-back in a world where everything shone with the Inner Light, and was infinite in its significance.

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describing his experiment with mescaline, p. 22
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 3 days ago
He would be the finer gentleman...

He would be the finer gentleman that should leave the world without having tasted of lying or pretence of any sort, or of wantonness or conceit.

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IX, 2
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 weeks ago
Listen to me: a family man...

Listen to me: a family man is never a real family man. An assassin is never entirely assassin. They play a role, you understand. While a dead man, he is really dead. To be or not to be, right?

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Hugo, Act 4, sc. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 month 2 weeks ago
Even when labor is subjugated by...

Even when labor is subjugated by capital it always necessarily maintains its own autonomy, and this ever more clearly true today with respect to the new immaterial, cooperative and collaborative forms of labor. This relationship is not isolated to the economic terrain but, as we will argue later, spills over into the biopolitical terrain of society as a hole, including military conflicts. In any case, we should recognize here that even in asymmetrical conflicts victory in terms of complete domination is not possible. All that can be achieved is a provisional and limited maintenance of control and order that must constantly be policed and preserved. Counterinsurgency is a full-time job.

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54
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 2 weeks ago
The patient typically finds himself impelled...

The patient typically finds himself impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that doesn't seem to owe anything to evidence or reason, but which, nevertheless, he feels as totally compelling and convincing. We doctors refer to such a belief as "faith".

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 1 week ago
Wherefore by their fruits ye shall...

Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

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Matthew 7:20 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
A creative economy is the fuel...

A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence.

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Aristocracy
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 3 weeks ago
Seek first God's Kingdom, that is,...

Seek first God's Kingdom, that is, become like the lilies and the birds, become perfectly silent - then shall the rest be added unto you.

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Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
5 months 1 week ago
"Do not blame Caesar, blame the...

Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome, interpreted to mean 'more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.

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This is also from the 1965 essay by Justice Millard Caldwell. It is not clear if this is based in any specific dialogue.
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
1 month 2 weeks ago
A right exists in theory... All...

A right exists in theory... All human beings have the same set of rights, but rights need to be enforced by the state. It needs to rely on the coercive power of the state... its army, its police force, to actually make those rights something real that citizens can enjoy, and the enforcement power is not universal. ...We wouldn't want to live in a world in which every liberal state wanted to enforce liberal rights in every other state in the world.

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24:09
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 3 weeks ago
The monopoly of capital becomes a...

The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.

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Vol. I, Ch. 32, p. 837.
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 3 weeks ago
After these matters we ought perhaps...

After these matters we ought perhaps next to discuss pleasure. For it is thought to be most intimately connected with our human nature, which is the reason why in educating the young we steer them by the rudders of pleasure and pain; it is thought, too, that to enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on virtue of character. For these things extend right through life, with a weight and power of their own in respect both to virtue and to the happy life, since men choose what is pleasant and avoid what is painful; and such things, it will be thought, we should least of all omit to discuss, especially since they admit of much dispute.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 3 weeks ago
You have not that power you...

You have not that power you ought to have over him, till he comes to be more afraid of offending so good a friend than of losing some part of his future expectation.

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Sec. 97
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
The silent organ loudest chants The...

The silent organ loudest chants The master's requiem.

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Dirge, st. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 1 week ago
The aged are cared for until...

The aged are cared for until death; adults are employed in jobs that make full use of their abilities; and children are nourished, educated, and fostered;...orphans... the disabled and the diseased are all well taken care of....

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 3 weeks ago
We are constantly railing against the...

We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man's afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures ... But what provokes me is that only their adverse side is considered ... and yet only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded.

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As translated in Diderot (1977) by Otis Fellows, p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 3 weeks ago
An old fairy tale has it...

An old fairy tale has it that science began with the rejection of superstition. In fact it was the rejection of rationalism that gave birth to scientific inquiry. Ancient and medieval thinkers believed the world could be understood by applying first principles. Modern science begins when observation and experiment come first, and the results are accepted even when what they show seems to be impossible.

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Foreword: Two Attempts to Cheat Death (pp. 5-6)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
Most of us are not neutral...

Most of us are not neutral in feeling, but, as human beings, we have to remember that, if the issues between East and West are to be decided in any manner that can give any possible satisfaction to anybody, whether Communist or anti-Communist, whether Asian or European or American, whether White or Black, then these issues must not be decided by war. We should wish this to be understood, both in the East and in the West.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 3 weeks ago
A people who are still, as...

A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 3 weeks ago
Furthermore, when citizens are all almost...

Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power.

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Chapter III.
Philosophical Maxims
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