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Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 days ago
But oppression by your Mock-Superiors well...

But oppression by your Mock-Superiors well shaken off, the grand problem yet remains to solve: That of finding government by your Real-Superiors! Alas, how shall we ever learn the solution of that, benighted, bewildered, sniffing, sneering, godforgetting unfortunates as we are? It is a work for centuries; to be taught us by tribulations, confusions, insurrections, obstructions; who knows if not by conflagration and despair! It is a lesson inclusive of all other lessons; the hardest of all lessons to learn.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
2 months 1 week ago
Morality must be the heart of...

Morality must be the heart of our existence, if it is to be what it wants to be for us. ... The highest form of philosophy is ethics. Thus all philosophy begins with "I am." The highest statement of cognition must be an expression of that fact which is the means and ground for all cognition, namely, the goal of the I.

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Fichte Studies § 556
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 2 weeks ago
If reason (I mean abstract reason,...

If reason (I mean abstract reason, derived from inquiries a priori) be not alike mute with regard to all questions concerning cause and effect, this sentence at least it will venture to pronounce, That a mental world, or universe of ideas, requires a cause as much, as does a material world, or universe of objects; and, if similar in its arrangement, must require a similar cause. For what is there in this subject, which should occasion a different conclusion or inference? In an abstract view, they are entirely alike; and no difficulty attends the one supposition, which is not common to both of them.

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Philo to Cleanthes, Part IV
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
3 months 6 days ago
Nietzsche understands the aesthetic state of...

Nietzsche understands the aesthetic state of the observer and recipient on the basis of the state of the creator. Thus the effect of the artwork is nothing else than a reawakening of the creator's state in the one who enjoys the artwork. Observation of art follows in the wake of creation. Nietzsche says (SM, 821), "-the effect of artworks is arousal of the art-creating state, rapture."

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p. 117
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
The farther men get from God,...

The farther men get from God, the farther they advance into the knowledge of religions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 1 week ago
You should hammer your iron when...

You should hammer your iron when it is glowing hot.

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Maxim 262
Philosophical Maxims
Averroes
Averroes
3 months 4 weeks ago
Knowledge is the conformity of the...

Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 1 week ago
Revolutions never go backwards.

Revolutions never go backwards.

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p. 214
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 1 week ago
Good is a good doctor, but...

Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.

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Considerations by the Way
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
1 month 3 weeks ago
The concept of positivity in itself,...

The concept of positivity in itself, in abstracto, has become part and parcel of the ideology today. ... Critique has started to become suspect, regardless of its content.

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p. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 1 week ago
We have seen how it is...
We have seen how it is originally language which works on the construction of concepts, a labor taken over in later ages by science. Just as the bee simultaneously constructs cells and fills them with honey, so science works unceasingly on this great columbarium of concepts, the graveyard of perceptions.
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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months 1 week ago
Inequalities are permissible when they maximize,...

Inequalities are permissible when they maximize, or at least all contribute to, the long term expectations of the least fortunate group in society.

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Chapter III, Section 26, pg. 151
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month 6 days ago
Falling in love is the one...

Falling in love is the one illogical adventure, the one thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural, in our trite and reasonable world. The effect is out of all proportion with the cause. Two persons, neither of them, it may be, very amiable or very beautiful, meet, speak a little, and look a little into each other's eyes. That has been done a dozen or so of times in the experience of either with no great result. But on this occasion all is different. They fall at once into that state in which another person becomes to us the very gist and centrepoint of God's creation, and demolishes our laborious theories with a smile; in which our ideas are so bound up with the one master-thought that even the trivial cares of our own person become so many acts of devotion, and the love of life itself is translated into a wish to remain in the same world with so precious and desirable a fellow-creature.

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Virginibus Puerisque, Ch. 3.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
Science seems to be at war...

Science seems to be at war with itself.... Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false.

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An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940), Introduction, p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 2 weeks ago
I could not be true and...

I could not be true and constant to the argument I handle, if I were not willing to go beyond others; but yet not more willing than to have others go beyond me again: which may the better appear by this, that I have propounded my opinions naked and unarmed, not seeking to preoccupate the liberty of men's judgments by confutations.

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Book II
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 3 weeks ago
Promising, committment, and fidelity, for instance,...

Promising, committment, and fidelity, for instance, are genuinely temporal practices.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 1 week ago
The child must be brought up...

The child must be brought up free (that he allow others to be free). He must learn to endure the restraint to which freedom subjects itself for its own preservation (experience no subordination to his command). Thus he must be disciplined. This precedes instruction. Training must continue without interruption. He must learn to do without things and to be cheerful about it. He must not be obliged to dissimulate, he must acquire immediate horror of lies, must learn so to respect the rights of men that they become an insurmountable wall for him. His instruction must be more negative. He must not learn religion before he knows morality. He must be refined, but not spoiled (pampered). He must learn to speak frankly, and must assume no false shame. Before adolescence he must not learn fine manners ; thoroughness is the chief thing. Thus he is crude longer, but earlier useful and capable.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 3
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
2 months 2 weeks ago
In the deep discovery of the...

In the deep discovery of the Subterranean world, a shallow part would satisfy some enquirers.

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Chapter I
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 2 weeks ago
Why may not a goose say...

Why may not a goose say thus: "All the parts of the universe I have an interest in: the earth serves me to walk upon, the sun to light me; the stars have their influence upon me; I have such an advantage by the winds and such by the waters; there is nothing that yon heavenly roof looks upon so favourably as me. I am the darling of Nature! Is it not man that keeps and serves me?"

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Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
I greatly doubt whether the men...

I greatly doubt whether the men who become pirate chiefs are those who are filled with retrospective terror of their fathers, or whether Napoleon, at Austerlitz, really felt that he was getting even with Madame Mère. I know nothing of the mother of Attila, but I rather suspect that she spoilt the little darling, who subsequently found the world irritating because it sometimes resisted his whims.

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Ch. 2: Leaders and Followers
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months ago
He will through life….

He will through life be master of himself and a happy man who from day to day can have said, "I have lived: tomorrow the Father may fill the sky with black clouds or with cloudless sunshine."

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Book III, ode xxix, line 41
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 months 3 days ago
So that every Crime is a...

So that every Crime is a sinne; but not every sinne a Crime.

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The Second Part, Chapter 27, p. 151
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
4 months 1 week ago
Democracy does not contain any force...

Democracy does not contain any force which will check the constant tendency to put more and more on the public payroll. The state is like a hive of bees in which the drones display, multiply and starve the workers so the idlers will consume the food and the workers will perish.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
3 weeks 5 days ago
Sound knowledge respecting the habits and...

Sound knowledge respecting the habits and mode of life of the man-like Apes has been even more difficult of attainment than correct information regarding their structure.

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Ch.1, p. 36
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
I have lived in the pursuit...

I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social. Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give wisdom at more mundane times. Social: to see in imagination the society that is to be created, where individuals grow freely, and where hate and greed and envy die because there is nothing to nourish them. These things I believe, and the world, for all its horrors, has left me unshaken.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 1 week ago
I have never worked as hard...

I have never worked as hard as now. I go for a brief walk in the morning. Then I come home and sit in my room without interruption until about three o'clock. My eyes can barely see. Then with my walking stick in hand I sneak off to the restaurant, but am so weak that I believe that if somebody were to call out my name, I would keel over and die. Then I go home and begin again. In my indolence during the past months I had pumped up a veritable shower bath, and now I have pulled the string and the ideas are cascading down upon me: healthy, happy, merry, gay, blessed children born with ease and yet all of them with the birthmark of my personality.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 1 week ago
He would have left a Greek...

He would have left a Greek accent slanting the wrong way, and righted up a falling man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
2 months 4 weeks ago
As Athenodorus was taking his leave...

As Athenodorus was taking his leave of Cæsar, "Remember," said he, "Cæsar, whenever you are angry, to say or do nothing before you have repeated the four-and-twenty letters to yourself."

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Cæsar Augustus
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 1 week ago
To this day, and in quarters...

To this day, and in quarters where they should know better, Darwinism is widely regarded as a theory of 'chance'.It is grindingly, creakingly, crashingly obvious that, if Darwinism were really a theory of chance, it couldn't work. You don't need to be a mathematician or physicist to calculate that an eye or a haemoglobin molecule would take from here to infinity to self-assemble by sheer higgledy-piggledy luck. Far from being a difficulty peculiar to Darwinism, the astronomic improbability of eyes and knees, enzymes and elbow joints and the other living wonders is precisely the problem that any theory of life must solve, and that Darwinism uniquely does solve.

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Chapter 3, "The Message from the Mountain" (p. 77)
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 3 weeks ago
The first thing that we know...

The first thing that we know about ourselves is our imperfection.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
What is marvelous is that each...

What is marvelous is that each day brings us a new reason to disappear.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 1 week ago
I assert(1) There is no method...

I assert(1) There is no method of discovering a scientific theory.(2) There is no method of ascertaining the truth [i.e., verification] of a scientific hypothesis...(3) There is no method of ascertaining whether a hypothesis is 'probable', in the sense of the probability calculus.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 1 week ago
To love life is to love...

To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings.

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Bk. XIV, ch. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 1 week ago
We measure the earth, sun, stars,...

We measure the earth, sun, stars, and ocean depths. We burrow into the depths of the earth for gold. We search for rivers and mountains on the moon. We discover new stars and know their magnitudes. We sound the depths of gorges and build clever machines. Each day brings a new invention. What don't we think of! What can't we do! But there is something else, the most important thing of all, that we are missing. We do not know exactly what it is. We are like a small child who knows he does not feel well but cannot explain why. We are uneasy, because we know a lot of superfluous facts; but we do not know what is really important-ourselves.

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p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
2 months 2 weeks ago
Those wise men knew God to...

Those wise men knew God to be in things, and Divinity to be latent in Nature, working and glowing differently in different subjects and succeeding through diverse physical forms, in certain arrangements, in making them participants in her, I say, in her being, in her life and intellect.

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As translated by Arthur Imerti
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 1 week ago
The faith that stands on authority...

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

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The Over-soul
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 1 week ago
Good order is the foundation of...

Good order is the foundation of all good things.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 1 week ago
You know how much I admire...

You know how much I admire Che Guevara. In fact, I believe that the man was not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age: as a fighter and as a man, as a theoretician who was able to further the cause of revolution by drawing his theories from his personal experience in battle.

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As quoted in Marianne Alexandre (ed.), !Viva Che!: Contributions in Tribute to Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, 1968
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
3 months 3 weeks ago
I make no doubt... that these...

I make no doubt... that these rules are simple, artless, and natural.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 days ago
For the Scepticism, as I said,...

For the Scepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; it is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 1 week ago
For the things we have to...

For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
3 weeks 2 days ago
I find I am shedding hypocrisy...

I find I am shedding hypocrisy in human relationships. What a rest that will be! The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask.

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Ch. 2; part of this statement has often been paraphrased: "The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere."
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 1 week ago
In fact, it is as difficult...

In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

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Quotation and Originality
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 6 days ago
It is the duty...
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Main Content / General
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 1 week ago
If there is anything in the...

If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity.

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Unverified attribution noted in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1993), ed. Suzy Platt, Library of Congress, p. 227
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
3 months 3 weeks ago
For as children….

For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things that children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. This terror, therefore, and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of daylight, but by the aspect and law of nature.

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Book II, lines 55-61 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months ago
A young man should serve...

A young man should serve his parents at home and be respectful to elders outside his home. He should be earnest and truthful, loving all, but become intimate with humaneness. After doing this, if he has energy to spare, he can study literature and the arts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
2 months 1 week ago
An ardent affection for the human...

An ardent affection for the human race makes enthusiastic characters eager to produce alteration in laws and governments prematurely. To render them useful and permanent, they must be the growth of each particular soil, and the gradual fruit of the ripening understanding of the nation, matured by time, not forced by an unnatural fermentation.

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Appendix
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 3 weeks ago
Rituals are also symbolic practices... in...

Rituals are also symbolic practices... in the sense that they bring people together to create an alliance, a wholeness, a community.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 1 week ago
This education, therefore, results at the...

This education, therefore, results at the very outset in knowledge which transcends all experience, which is abstract, absolute, and strictly universal, and which includes within itself beforehand all subsequently possible experience. On the other hand, the old education was concerned, as a rule, only with the actual qualities of things as they are and as they should be believed and rioted, without anyone being able to assign a reason for them. It aimed, therefore, at purely passive reception by means of the power of memory, which was completely at the service of things. It was, therefore, impossible to have any idea of the mind as an independent original principle of things themselves.

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General Nature of New Eduction p. 28
Philosophical Maxims
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