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Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
3 weeks 2 days ago
He who is bent on doing...

He who is bent on doing evil can never want occasion.

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Maxim 459
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months ago
This is a work that cannot...

This is a work that cannot be completed except by a society of men of letters and skilled workmen, each working separately on his own part, but all bound together solely by their zeal for the best interests of the human race and a feeling of mutual good will.

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Article on Encyclopedia, as translated in The Many Faces of Philosophy : Reflections from Plato to Arendt (2001), "Diderot", p. 237
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 3 weeks ago
The opposite of an idealist is...

The opposite of an idealist is too often a man without love.

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Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
2 months 2 weeks ago
The need of black conservatives to...

The need of black conservatives to gain the respect of their white peers deeply shapes certain elements of their conservatism. In this regard, they simply want what most people want, to be judged by the quality of their skills, not by the color of their skin. But the black conservatives overlook the fact that affirmative action policies were political responses to the pervasive refusal of most white Americans to judge black Americans on that basis.

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(p52)
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 weeks 4 days ago
In the greatest confusion there is...

In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves-to that part of us which is conscious. ... The independence of this consciousness, which has the strength to be immune to the noise of history and the distractions of our immediate surroundings, is what the life struggle is all about. The soul has to find and hold its ground against hostile forces, sometimes embodied in ideas which frequently deny its very existence, and which indeed often seem to be trying to annul it altogether.

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pp. 16-17
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
They reckon ill who leave me...

They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt; And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

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Brahma, st. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is sad that often…

It is sad that often, to be a good patriot, one must be the enemy of the rest of mankind.

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"Country"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
3 months 1 week ago
It must be said that charity...

It must be said that charity can, in no way, exist along with mortal sin.

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Disputed Questions: On Charity, c. 1270
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 2 weeks ago
No man's error becomes his own...

No man's error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.

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The Second Part, Chapter 26, p. 144
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months ago
Americans cleave to the things of...

Americans cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die,... They clutch everything but hold nothing fast, and so lose grip as they hurry after some new delight. ... Death steps in in the end and stops him before he has grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes him. At first sight there is something astonishing in this spectacle of so many lucky men restless in the midst of abundance. But it is a spectacle as old as the world; all that is new is to see a whole people performing in it.

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Book Two, Chapter XIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 1 week ago
The case is a good example...

The case is a good example of what Van Vogt came to call "the violent man" or the "Right Man." He is a man driven by a manic need for self-esteem - to feel that he is a "somebody." He is obsessed by the question of "losing face," so will never, under any circumstances, admit that he might be in the wrong.

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p. 211
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Of Every One-Hundred Men, Ten shouldn't...

Of Every One-Hundred Men, Ten shouldn't even be there, Eighty are nothing but targets, Nine are real fighters... We are lucky to have them... They make the battle. Ah but the One, One of them is a Warrior... and He will bring the others back.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks 4 days ago
In historical events great men -...

In historical events great men - so-called - are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.

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Bk. IX, ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 3 weeks ago
"How then shall they have the...

"How then shall they have the play-games you allow them, if none must be bought for them?" I answer, they should make them themselves, or at least endeavour it, and set themselves about it. ...And if you help them where they are at a stand, it will more endear you to them than any chargeable toys that you shall buy for them.

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Sec. 130
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
We say: he has no talent,...

We say: he has no talent, only tone. But tone is precisely what cannot be invented - we're born with it. Tone is an inherited grace, the privilege some of us have of making our organic pulsations felt - tone is more than talent, it is its essence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
3 weeks 6 days ago
Say what you will about the...

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
There are few with whom I...

There are few with whom I can communicate so freely as with Pope. But Pope cannot bear every truth. He has a timidity which hinders the full exertion of his faculties, almost as effectually as bigotry cramps those of the general herd of mankind. But whoever is a genuine follower of truth keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is led, provided that she is the leader. And, my Lord, if it may be properly considered, it were infinitely better to remain possessed by the whole legion of vulgar mistakes, than to reject some, and, at the same time, to retain a fondness for others altogether as absurd and irrational. The first has at least a consistency, that makes a man, however erroneously, uniform at least; but the latter way of proceeding is such an inconsistent chimera and jumble of philosophy and vulgar prejudice, that hardly anything more ridiculous can be conceived.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks 4 days ago
If you want to be happy,...

If you want to be happy, be.

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Attributed in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 352
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 4 weeks ago
The objective of all human arrangements...
The objective of all human arrangements is through distracting one's thoughts to cease to be aware of life.
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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 2 weeks ago
Hear, and understand: Not that which...

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

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15:10-11 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 4 weeks ago
Style ought to prove that one...
Style ought to prove that one believes in an idea; not only that one thinks it but also feels it.
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Philosophical Maxims
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking
1 month 3 days ago
Until the seventeenth century there was...

Until the seventeenth century there was no concept of evidence with which to pose the problem of induction!

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Chapter 4, Evidence, p. 31.
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 3 weeks ago
That which distinguishes the Christian narrow...

That which distinguishes the Christian narrow way from the common human narrow way is the voluntary. Christ was not someone who coveted earthly things but had to be satisfied with poverty, no, he chose poverty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 2 weeks ago
The concept of labor is not...

The concept of labor is not peripheral in Hegel's system, but is the central notion through which he conceives the development of society. Driven by the insight that opened this dimension to him, Hegel describes the mode of integration prevailing in a commodity-producing society in terms that clearly fore-shadow Marx's critical approach.

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P. 78
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
1 month 1 week ago
Hooks is a contentious writer, and...

Hooks is a contentious writer, and I don't always agree with her contentions, but Ain't I a Woman has an intellectual vitality and daring that should set new standards for the discussion of race and sex.

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Ellen Willis in No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 3 weeks ago
To understand oneself in existence is...

To understand oneself in existence is the Christian principle, except that this self has received much richer and much more profound qualifications that are even more difficult to understand together with existing. The believer is a subjective thinker, and the difference, is only between the simple person and the simple wise person. Here again the oneself is not humanity in general, subjectivity in general, and other such things, whereas everything becomes easy inasmuch as the difficulty is removed and the whole matter is shifted over into the shadow play of abstraction.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 3 weeks ago
There is something in human history...

There is something in human history like retribution; and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself. The first blow dealt to the French monarchy proceeded from the nobility, not from the peasants. The Indian revolt does not commence with the ryots, tortured, dishonoured and stripped naked by the British, but with the sepoys, clad, fed and petted, fatted and pampered by them.

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In an article written for the New York Daily Tribune, September 16, 1857
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 3 weeks ago
As for the life of money-making,...

As for the life of money-making, it is one of constraint, and wealth is manifestly not the good of which we are in search, for it is only useful as a means to something else, and for this reason there is less to be said for it than for the ends mentioned before, which are, at any rate, desired for their own sakes.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 3 weeks ago
The purely corporeal can be uncanny....

The purely corporeal can be uncanny. Compare the way angels and devils are portrayed. So-called "miracles" must be connected with this. A miracle must be, as it were, a sacred gesture.

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p. 50e
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
1 month 3 weeks ago
All religions are cruel, all founded...

All religions are cruel, all founded on blood; for all rest principally on the idea of sacrifice - that is, on the perpetual immolation of humanity to the insatiable vengeance of divinity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 4 weeks ago
Are designations congruent with things?
Are designations congruent with things? Is language the adequate expression of all realities? It is only by means of forgetfulness that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess a "truth" of the grade just indicated. If he will not be satisfied with truth in the form of tautology, that is to say, if he will not be content with empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusions.
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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Our condition is like that of...

Our condition is like that of the poor wolves: if one of the flock wound himself, or so much as limp, the rest eat him up incontinently. That serene Power interposes the check upon the caprices and officiousness of our wills.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 4 weeks ago
The education of the common people...

The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the public more than that of people of some rank and fortune.

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Chapter I, Part III, p. 845.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is the duty of every...

It is the duty of every patriot to protect his country from its government.

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Edward Abbey, "A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." as written in "A Voice Crying in the Wilderness" (Vox Clamantis en Deserto): Notes from a Secret Journal (1990), ISBN 0312064888
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 weeks 2 days ago
I neither approve nor disapprove. I...

I neither approve nor disapprove. I merely try to understand. Sexual freedom is as natural to newly tribalized youth as drugs.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 2 weeks 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
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
2 months 2 days ago
Of the eternal corporeal substance (which...

Of the eternal corporeal substance (which is not producible ex nihilo, nor reducible ad nihilum, but rarefiable, condensable, formable, arrangeable, and "fashionable") the composition is dissolved, the complexion is changed, the figure is modified, the being is altered, the fortune is varied, only the elements remaining what they are in substance, that same principle persevering which was always the one material principle, which is the true substance of things, eternal, ingenerable and incorruptible.

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As translated by Arthur Imerti
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 3 days ago
She [virtue] requires a rough and...

She [virtue] requires a rough and stormy passage; she will have either outward difficulties to wrestle with, ... or internal difficulties.

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Book II, Ch. 11. Of Cruelty
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
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 week 4 days ago
My convictions, positive and negative, on...

My convictions, positive and negative, on all the matters of which you speak, are of long and slow growth and are firmly rooted. But the great blow which fell on me seemed to stir them to their foundation, and had I lived a couple of centuries earlier I could have fancied a devil scoffing at me and them - and asking me what profit it was to have stripped myself of the hopes and consolations of the mass of mankind? To which my only reply was and is - Oh devil! Truth is better than much profit. I have searched over the grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and name and fame were all to be lost to me one after the other as the penalty, still I will not lie.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
1 month 3 weeks ago
The secret of Hegel's dialectic lies...

The secret of Hegel's dialectic lies ultimately in this alone, that it negates theology through philosophy in order then to negate philosophy through theology. Both the beginning and the end are constituted by theology; philosophy stands in the middle as the negation of the first positedness, but the negation of the negation is again theology. At first everything is overthrown, but then everything is reinstated in its old place, as in Descartes. The Hegelian philosophy is the last grand attempt to restore a lost and defunct Christianity through philosophy, and, of course, as is characteristic of the modern era, by identifying the negation of Christianity with Christianity itself.

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Part II, Section 21
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 3 weeks ago
When we hear news

When we hear news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

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Letter to Charles-Augustin Ferriol, comte d'Argental, 28 August 1760]]
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months ago
Happiest are the people who give...

Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others.

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As quoted in Happyology by Harald W. Tietze, p. 28
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 2 days ago
All ordinary expression...
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Main Content / General
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 5 days ago
I believe that man is in...

I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

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L 98
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
3 months 1 week ago
These reasonings are unconnected...

These reasonings are unconnected: "I am richer than you, therefore I am better"; "I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better." The connection is rather this: "I am richer than you, therefore my property is greater than yours;" "I am more eloquent than you, therefore my style is better than yours." But you, after all, are neither property nor style.

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(44).
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 weeks ago
The stronghold of the determinist argument...

The stronghold of the determinist argument is the antipathy to the idea of chance...This notion of alternative possibility, this admission that any one of several things may come to pass is, after all, only a roundabout name for chance.

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The Dilemma of Determinism (1884) p.153
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
1 month 2 weeks ago
People from a planet without flowers...

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.

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A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970); 2001, p. 170.
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 3 weeks ago
It appears... that a work similar...

It appears... that a work similar in its object and general conception to that of Adam Smith, but adapted to the more extended knowledge and improved ideas of the present age, is the kind of contribution which Political Economy at present requires. The Wealth of Nations is in many parts obsolete, and in all, imperfect. Political Economy... has grown up almost from infancy since the time of Adam Smith; and the philosophy of society... has advanced many steps beyond the point at which he left it.

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Preface, 1848
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
3 months 1 week ago
Therefore death is nothing…

Therefore death is nothing to us, it matters not one jot, since the nature of the mind is understood to be mortal.

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Book III, lines 830-831 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
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