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Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
7 months 2 weeks ago
It seems to be almost an...

It seems to be almost an invariable rule that as real power declines, the symbols of power multiply and intensify in compensation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
7 months 3 days ago
Whatever you would make habitual, practice...

Whatever you would make habitual, practice it; and if you would not make a thing habitual, do not practice it, but accustom yourself to something else.

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Book II, ch. 18, 4.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
4 months 4 weeks ago
The world you perceive is drastically...

The world you perceive is drastically simplified model of the real world.

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p. xxvi.
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
2 months 3 weeks ago
In dealing with relationships, not only...

In dealing with relationships, not only man-to-man, but also State-to-State and race-to-race, it is necessary to be able to conceive again of that obedience which does not humiliate but exalts, that command or leadership which commits one to superiority and a precise responsibility.

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p. 117
Philosophical Maxims
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl
2 months 4 weeks ago
Symmetry is a vast subject, significant...

Symmetry is a vast subject, significant in art and nature. Mathematics lies at its root, and it would be hard to find a better one on which to demonstrate the working of the mathematical intellect.

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Symmetry
Philosophical Maxims
William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford
2 months 2 weeks ago
No mathematician can give any meaning...

No mathematician can give any meaning to language about matter, force, inertia, used in text-books of mechanics.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 1 week ago
Talk never yet could guide any...

Talk never yet could guide any man's or nation's affairs; nor will it yours, except towards the Limbus Patrum, where all talk, except a very select kind of it, lodges at last.

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Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
3 months 2 weeks ago
There is only one purpose to...

There is only one purpose to which a whole society can be directed by a deliberate plan. That purpose is war, and there is no other.

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Ch. V: "The Totalitarian Regimes", §7, p. 90
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
5 months 2 days ago
No artist can develop without increasing...

No artist can develop without increasing his self-knowledge; but self-knowledge supposes a certain preoccupation with the meaning of human life and the destiny of man. A definite set of beliefs - Methodist Christianity, for example - may only be a hindrance to development; but it is not more so than Beckett's refusal to think at all. Shaw says somewhere that all intelligent men must be preoccupied with either religion, politics, or sex. (He seems to attribute T. E. Lawrence's tragedy to his refusal to come to grips with any of them.) It is hard to see how an artist could hope to achieve any degree of self-knowledge without being deeply concerned with at least one of the three.

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p. 197
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
3 months ago
The belly is an ungrateful wretch,...

The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 1 week ago
"Detect quacks"? Yes do, for Heaven's...

"Detect quacks"? Yes do, for Heaven's sake; but know withal the men that are to be trusted! Till we know that, what is all our knowledge; how shall we even so much as "detect"? For the vulpine sharpness, which considers itself to be knowledge, and "detects" in that fashion, is far mistaken. Dupes indeed are many: but, of all dupes, there is none so fatally situated as he who lives in undue terror of being duped.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
6 months 2 weeks ago
Everything functions. That is exactly what...

Everything functions. That is exactly what is uncanny. Everything functions and the functioning drives us further and further to more functioning, and technology tears people away and uproots them from the Earth more and more. I don't know if you are scared; I was certainly scared when I recently saw the photographs of the Earth taken from the Moon. We don't need an atom bomb at all; the uprooting of human beings is already taking place. We only have purely technological conditions left. It is no longer an earth on which human beings live today.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
6 months 2 weeks ago
It is not the same thing....

It is not the same thing. You are perhaps not lying, but you are not telling the truth.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
3 months ago
How is it possible that a...

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

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Page 138
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 1 week ago
I feel that these old Northmen...

I feel that these old Northmen wore looking into Nature with open eye and soul: most earnest, honest; childlike, and yet manlike; with a great-hearted simplicity and depth and freshness, in a true, loving, admiring, unfearing way.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 3 weeks ago
As far as physicians go, chance...

As far as physicians go, chance is more valuable than knowledge.

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Ch. 37
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
6 months 2 weeks ago
An act has no ethical quality...

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
6 months 3 weeks ago
Nature is satisfied with little; and...

Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also.

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As quoted in The Story of Philosophy (1933) by Will Durant, p. 176
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 2 weeks ago
I am ashamed of belonging to...

I am ashamed of belonging to the species Homo Sapiens...You & I may be thankful to have lived in happier times - you more than I, because you have no children.

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Letter to Lucy Donnelly, 6/23/1946
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
5 months 1 week ago
In most cases the esthetic objection...

In most cases the esthetic objection to doses of morals and of economic or political propaganda in works of art will be found upon analysis to reside in the over-weighing of certain values at the expense of others until, except for those in a similar stare of one-sides enthusiasm, weariness rather than refreshment sets in.

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p. 188
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
6 months 2 weeks ago
Social and economic inequalities are to...

Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society.

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p. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 2 weeks ago
Difficulty is a severe instructor, set...

Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too. Pater ipse colendi haud facilem esse viam voluit. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

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Volume iii, p. 453
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
4 months 5 days ago
Let us have "sweet girl graduates"...

Let us have "sweet girl graduates" by all means. They will be none the less sweet for a little wisdom; and the "golden hair" will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within.

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Emancipation - Black and White
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
3 months 1 week ago
If you could see the earth...

If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon.

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Salviati, p. 88
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
6 months 2 weeks ago
When you live alone you no...

When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.

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Diary entry of Tuesday, 30 January
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 2 weeks ago
The acquisition of Canada this year,...

The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and the final expulsion of England from the American continent.

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Statement during an early stage of the War of 1812, in a letter to William Duane
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
5 months 2 weeks ago
The fundamental maxim of those who...

The fundamental maxim of those who stand at the head of this Age, and therefore the principle of the Age, is this,-to accept nothing as really existing or obligatory, but that which they can understand and clearly comprehend. With regard to this fundamental principle, as we have now declared and adopted it without farther definition or limitation, this third Age is precisely similar to that which is to follow it, the fourth, or age of Reason as Science,-and by virtue of this similarity prepares the way for it. Before the tribunal of Science, too, nothing is accepted but the Conceivable. Only in the application of the principle there is this difference between the two Ages,-that the third, which we shall shortly name that of Empty Freedom, makes its fixed and previously acquired conceptions the measure of existence; while the fourth-that of Science-on the contrary, makes existence the measure, not of its acquired, but of its desiderated beliefs.

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p. 19
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
6 months 2 weeks ago
Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially...

Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist.

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Ch. XVI: Of Nationality, As Connected with Representative Government (p. 382)
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Though the coming....
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Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
5 months 3 weeks ago
All abstract sciences are nothing but...

All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.

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Dr. Théophile de Bordeu, in "Conversation Between D'Alembert and Diderot"
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
6 months 2 weeks ago
There is but one unconditional commandment,...

There is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see. Abstract rules indeed can help; but they help the less in proportion as our intuitions are more piercing, and our vocation is the stronger for the moral life. For every real dilemma is in literal strictness a unique situation; and the exact combination of ideals realized and ideals disappointed which each decision creates is always a universe without a precedent, and for which no adequate previous rule exists.

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"The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life", International Journal of Ethics, April 1891
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 2 weeks ago
Probably in time physiologists will be...

Probably in time physiologists will be able to make nerves connecting the bodies of different people; this will have the advantage that we shall be able to feel another man's tooth aching.

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Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), p. 493
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 months 2 weeks ago
United States! the ages plead, -...

United States! the ages plead, - Present and Past in under-song, - Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue.

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Ode, st. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
4 months 2 weeks ago
Natural selection is an extremely simple...

Natural selection is an extremely simple process, in the sense that very little machinery needs to be set up in order for it to work. Of course the effects and consequences of natural selection are complex in the extreme. But in order to set natural selection going on a real planet, all that is required is the existence of inherited information.

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Chapter 2, "Silken Fetters" (p. 68)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Merchants have no country. The mere...

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains. In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire them, and to effect this, they have perverted the best religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purposes. With the lawyers it is a new thing. They have, in the mother country, been generally the primest supporters of the free principles of their constitution. But there, too, they have changed.

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Letter to Horatio G. Spafford
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
5 months 1 day ago
I believe that none can "save"...

I believe that none can "save" his fellow man by making a choice for him. To help him, he can indicate the possible alternatives, with sincerity and love, without being sentimental and without illusion. The knowledge and awareness of the freeing alternatives can reawaken in an individual all his hidden energies and put him on the path to choosing respect for "life" instead of for "death."

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
6 months 2 weeks ago
The collective name for the ripe...

The collective name for the ripe fruits of religion in a character is Saintliness. The saintly character is the character for which spiritual emotions are the habitual centre of the personal energy; and there is a certain composite photograph of universal saintliness, the same in all religions, of which the features can easily be traced.

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Lectures XI, XII, AND XIII : "Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 2 weeks ago
We dread the future only when...

We dread the future only when we are not sure we can kill ourselves when we want to.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
6 months 3 weeks ago
The sentiments of men often differ...

The sentiments of men often differ with regard to beauty and deformity of all kinds, even while their general discourse is the same ... In all matters of opinion and science, the case is opposite: The difference among men is there oftener found to lie in generals than in particulars; and to be less in reality than in appearance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
3 months 4 days ago
Macaulay is like a book in...

Macaulay is like a book in breeches...He has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful.

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Vol. I, ch. 11, p. 415
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
2 months 1 week ago
May they not forget to...

May they not forget to keep pure the great heritage that puts them ahead of the West: the artistic configuration of life, the simplicity and modesty of personal needs, and the purity and serenity of the Japanese soul.

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Comment made after a six-week trip to Japan in November-December 1922, published in Kaizo 5, no. 1 (January 1923), 339. Einstein Archive 36-477.1. Appears in The New Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2005), p. 269
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
5 months 1 week ago
Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for...

Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

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16:17-19 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
5 months 1 week ago
The society which projects and undertakes...

The society which projects and undertakes the technological transformation of nature alters the base of domination by gradually replacing personal dependence (of the slave on the master, the serf on the lord of the manor, the lord on the donor of the fief, etc.) with dependence on the "objective order of things" (on economic laws, the market etc.).

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p. 144
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
4 months 2 days ago
As Gandhi taught, freedom can be...

As Gandhi taught, freedom can be reclaimed only by refusing to cooperate with unjust, immoral laws. The fight for truth-employing the principles of civil disobedience, nonviolence, and noncooperation-is not just our right as free citizens of free societies. It is our duty as citizens of the earth.

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(p184)
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
6 months 3 weeks ago
In every country it always is...

In every country it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it; nor could it ever have been called in question had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common sense of mankind. Their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of the great body of the people.

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Chapter III, Part II, p. 531.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
6 months 2 weeks ago
I cannot read a sentence in...

I cannot read a sentence in the book of the Hindoos without being elevated as upon the table-land of the Ghauts. It has such a rhythm as the winds of the desert, such a tide as the Ganges, and seems as superior to criticism as the Himmaleh Mounts. Even at this late hour, unworn by time with a native and inherent dignity it wears the English dress as indifferently as the Sanscrit.

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August 6, 1841
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
5 months 5 days ago
Respectable scientists like de Broglie himself...

Respectable scientists like de Broglie himself accept wave mechanics because it confers coherence and unity upon the experimental findings of contemporary science, and in spite of the astonishing changes it implies in connection with ideas of causality, time, and space, but it is because of these changes that it wins favor with the public. The great popular success of Einstein was the same thing. The public drinks in and swallows eagerly everything that tends to dispossess the intelligence in favor of some technique; it can hardly wait to abdicate from intelligence and reason and from everything that makes man responsible for his destiny.

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"Wave Mechanics," p. 75
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
5 months 2 weeks ago
The spirit of Poesy is the...

The spirit of Poesy is the morning light, which makes the Statue of Memnon sound.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is certain that nature inclines...

It is certain that nature inclines us toward the amorous orgy, just as much as toward the gastronomic orgy, and that while both are blameworthy in the excess, they would become praiseworthy in an order in which they could be equilibrated.

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Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World, J. Beecher (1986), p. 310
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
2 months 1 week ago
Whereas materialistic historians and philosophers...

Whereas materialistic historians and philosophers neglect psychic realities, Freud is inclined to overstress their importance. I am not a psychologist, but it seems to me fairly evident that physiological factors, especially our endocrines, control our destiny ... I am not able to venture a judgment on so important a phase of modern thought. However, it seems to me that psychoanalysis is not always salutary. It may not always be helpful to delve into the subconscious. The machinery of our legs is controlled by a hundred different muscles. Do you think it would help us to walk if we analyzed our legs and knew exactly which one of the little muscles must be employed in locomotion and the order in which they work? ... I am not prepared to accept all his [Freud's] conclusions, but I consider his work an immensely valuable contribution to the science of human behavior. I think he is even greater as a writer than as a psychologist. Freud's brilliant style is unsurpassed by anyone since Schopenhauer.

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Philosophical Maxims
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