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Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 2 weeks ago
A great profusion of things, which...

A great profusion of things, which are splendid or valuable in themselves, is magnificent. The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This cannot be owing to the stars themselves, separately considered. The number is certainly the cause. The apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our idea of magnificence. Besides, the stars lie in such apparent confusion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions to reckon them. This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity.

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Part II Section XIII
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 month 2 weeks ago
In 'voluntary' motions, Sensations produce Actions,...

In 'voluntary' motions, Sensations produce Actions, and the connexion is made by means of Ideas: in 'reflected' motions, the connexion neither seems to be nor is made by means of Ideas: in 'instinctive' motions, the connexion is such as requires Ideas, but we cannot believe the Ideas to exist.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 3 weeks ago
For my own part, I cannot...

For my own part, I cannot without grief see so much as an innocent beast pursued and killed that has no defence, and from which we have received no offence at all.

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Ch. 11, tr. Cotton, 1685
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 month 3 weeks ago
The psychotherapist ... tries to help...

The psychotherapist ... tries to help the individual to be himself and to go it alone without giving unnecessary offense to his community, to be in the world (of social convention) but not of the world.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 6 days ago
This great maxim of philosophy he...

This great maxim of philosophy he had gathered by the teaching of nature alone - that man was created to work, not to speculate or feel or dream. Accordingly, he set his whole heart thitherwards. He did work wisely and unweariedly, and perhaps performed more with the tools he had than any man I now know.

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Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
3 months 2 weeks ago
Literature is idiosyncratic arrangements in horizontal...

Literature is idiosyncratic arrangements in horizontal lines in only twenty-six symbols, ten arabic numbers, and about eight punctuation marks.

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Public conversation with Lee Stringer, in Like Shaking Hands With God
Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
5 months 2 weeks ago
Rights are, then, the fruits of...

Rights are, then, the fruits of the law, and of the law alone. There are no rights without law-no rights contrary to the law-no rights anterior to the law. Before the existence of laws there may be reasons for wishing that there were laws-and doubtless such reasons cannot be wanting, and those of the strongest kind;-but a reason for wishing that we possessed a right, does not constitute a right. To confound the existence of a reason for wishing that we possessed a right, with the existence of the right itself, is to confound the existence of a want with the means of relieving it. It is the same as if one should say, everybody is subject to hunger, therefore everybody has something to eat.

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Pannomial Fragments (c. 1831), quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. III (1838), p. 221
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 4 weeks ago
Anarchism is the only philosophy which...

Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 6 days ago
Is it not a right glorious...

Is it not a right glorious thing, and set of things, this that Shakspeare has brought us? For myself, I feel that there is actually a kind of sacredness in the fact of such a man being sent into this Earth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 1 week ago
To Live signifies to believe and...

To Live signifies to believe and hope - to lie and to lie to oneself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 4 weeks ago
An ethos of freedom stops power...

An ethos of freedom stops power from solidifying into domination and makes sure it remains an open game.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
5 months 1 week ago
The real discovery is the one...

The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question.

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§ 133
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 3 weeks ago
One cannot demand of a scholar...

One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.

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J 85
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 2 weeks ago
It is not for its own...

It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.

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Chapter I, p. 471.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 1 week ago
The direction of the world overwhelms...

The direction of the world overwhelms me at this time. In the long run, all the continents (yellow, black and brown) will spill over onto Old Europe. They are hundreds and hundreds of millions. They are hungry and they are not afraid to die. We no longer know how to die or how to kill. We could preach, but Europe believes in nothing. So, we must wait for the year 1000 or a miracle. For my part, I find it harder and harder to live before a wall.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
3 months 1 week ago
Youth now flees on feathered foot....

Youth now flees on feathered foot.

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To Will H. Low, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 3 weeks ago
I predict we will abolish suffering...

I predict we will abolish suffering throughout the living world. Our descendants will be animated by gradients of genetically pre-programmed well-being that are orders of magnitude richer than today's peak experiences.

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Quoted in Ethics Matters (2012) by Peter and Charlotte Vardy, p. 114 ISBN 978-0334043911
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
4 months 6 days ago
When we rise out of the...

When we rise out of the night into the new life and there begin to receive the signs, what can we know of that which - of him who gives them to us? Only what we experience from time to time from the signs themselves. If we name the speaker of this speech God, then it is always the God of a moment, a moment God.

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p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 3 weeks ago
To God, truly, the Giver and...

To God, truly, the Giver and Architect of Forms, and it may be to the angels and higher intelligences, it belongs to have an affirmative knowledge of forms immediately, and from the first contemplation. But this assuredly is more than man can do, to whom it is granted only to proceed at first by negatives, and at last to end in affirmatives, after exclusion has been exhausted.

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Aphorism XV
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 2 weeks ago
The value of money is in...

The value of money is in proportion to the quantity of the necessaries of life which it will purchase.

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Chapter II, Part II, Article IV.
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 2 weeks ago
The man of principles has character....

The man of principles has character. Of him we know definitely what to expect. He does not act on the basis of his instinct, but on the basis of his will. Therefore, without being redundant one can classify characteristics according to a person's faculty of desire (what is practical), as a) his nature, or natural talent, b) his temperament, or disposition, and c) his general character, or mode of thinking.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 195
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
5 months 1 week ago
To live, by definition, is not...

To live, by definition, is not something one learns. Not from oneself, it is not learned from life, taught by life. Only from the other and by death. In any case from the other at the edge of life. At the internal border or the external border, it is a heterodidactics between life and death.

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Exordium
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 5 days ago
A man living without conflicts, as...

A man living without conflicts, as if he never lives at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 months 2 weeks ago
A real mother, who knows the...

A real mother, who knows the will of God by experience, will prepare her children also to fulfil it. Such a mother will suffer if she sees her child overfed, effeminate, and dressed-up, for she knows that these things will make it difficult for it to fulfil the will of God which she recognizes.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 4 weeks ago
God functions like a stabilizer of...

God functions like a stabilizer of time.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
6 months 1 day ago
We are members of this Head,...

We are members of this Head, and this body cannot be decapitated. If the Head is in glory forever, so too are the members in glory forever, that Christ may be undivided forever.

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p.433
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 2 weeks ago
So that is what hell is….

So that is what hell is. I would never have believed it. You remember: the fire and brimstone, the torture. Ah! the farce. There is no need for torture: Hell is other people.

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Garcin, Act 1, sc. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 week ago
Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with...

Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with one another. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 week ago
The unformulated message of an assembly...

The unformulated message of an assembly of news items from every quarter of the globe is that the world today is one city. All war is civil war. All suffering is our own.

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p. 291
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
5 months 2 weeks ago
The open society is one in...

The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.

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Vol. 1, Endnotes to the Chapters : Notes to the Introduction.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 5 days ago
A scholar who loves comfort is...

A scholar who loves comfort is not worthy of the name.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt
1 month 2 weeks ago
Sovereign is he who decides on...

Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.

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p.5
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 2 weeks ago
If you are describing any occurrence......

If you are describing any occurrence... make two or more distinct reports at different times... We discriminate at first only a few features, and we need to reconsider our experience from many points of view and in various moods in order to perceive the whole.

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March 24, 1857
Philosophical Maxims
Avicenna
Avicenna
6 months 3 days ago
Religious law makes it illegal for...

Religious law makes it illegal for the ignorant to drink wine, but intelligence makes it legal for the intellectual.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
4 months 2 weeks ago
The decisions of law courts should...

The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counterauthority to the law.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 2 weeks ago
Truth that has been merely learned...

Truth that has been merely learned is like an artificial limb, a false tooth, a waxen nose; at best, like a nose made out of another's flesh; it adheres to us only because it is put on. But truth acquired by thinking of our own is like a natural limb; it alone really belongs to us. This is the fundamental difference between the thinker and the mere man of learning. The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the colour perfectly harmonised; it is true to life. On the other hand, the intellectual attainments of the mere man of learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of colours, which at most are systematically arranged, but devoid of harmony, connection and meaning.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 22, § 261
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 1 day ago
If a captive mind is unaware...

If a captive mind is unaware of being in prison, it is living in error. If it has recognized the fact, even for the tenth of a second, and then quickly forgotten it in order to avoid suffering, it is living in falsehood. Men of the most brilliant intelligence can be born, live and die in error and falsehood. In them, intelligence is neither a good, nor even an asset. The difference between more or less intelligent men is like the difference between criminals condemned to life imprisonment in smaller or larger cells. The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

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p. 69
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 4 days ago
The chief error....
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
The state of society is one...

The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,-a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

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par. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 month 2 weeks ago
God is imperiled. He is not...

God is imperiled. He is not almighty, that we may cross our hands, waiting for certain victory. He is not all-holy, that we may wait trustingly for him to pity and to save us. Within the province of our ephemeral flesh all of God is imperiled. He cannot be saved unless we save him with our own struggles; nor can we be saved unless he is saved. We are one. From the blind worm in the depths of the ocean to the endless arena of the Galaxy, only one person struggles and is imperiled: You. And within your small and earthen breast only one thing struggles and is imperiled: the Universe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 2 weeks ago
Farewell to the monsters…

Farewell to the monsters, farewell to the saints. Farewell to pride. All that is left is men.

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Act 10, sc. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
4 months 2 weeks ago
Language forms a kind of wealth,...

Language forms a kind of wealth, which all can make use of at once without causing any diminution of the store, and which thus admits a complete community of enjoyment; for all, freely participating in the general treasure, unconsciously aid in its preservation.

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Volume II, p. 213
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 2 days ago
A man, in so far as...

A man, in so far as he is an individual, may be very sharply detached from others, a sort of spiritual crustacean, and yet be very poor in differentiating content. And further, it is true on the other hand that the more personality a man has and the greater his interior riches and the more he is a society within himself, the less brusquely he is divided from his fellows.

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Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 month 2 weeks ago
The Plan of the System, may...

The Plan of the System, may aim at a Natural or an Artificial System. But no classes can be absolutely artificial, for if they were, no assertions could be made concerning them.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
10 months 1 week ago
A common goal...
Issue:

Because of subgrouping, physical separation, different types of genetics and other cultural factors, as well as limited isolation people subjectively deviate from their universal human necessity. They become aware of it when they are exposed to difference regularly.

Solution:

With controlled information delivery, as well as a clear ideological goal like universality, we can clear away the noise of chaos to understand deterministic goals directly.

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C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 2 weeks ago
To be taken without consent from...

To be taken without consent from my home and friends; to lose my liberty; to undergo all those assaults on my personality which modern psychotherapy knows how to deliver; to be re-made after some pattern of "normality" hatched in a Viennese laboratory to which I never professed allegiance; to know that this process will never end until either my captors have succeeded or I have grown wise enough to cheat them with apparent success-who cares whether this is called Punishment or not? "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment"

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1949
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Hölderlin
Friedrich Hölderlin
4 months 2 weeks ago
What is the wisdom of a...

What is the wisdom of a book compared with the wisdom of an angel?

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Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
5 months 1 week ago
The only knowledge that can truly...

The only knowledge that can truly orient action is knowledge that frees itself from mere human interests and is based in Ideas-in other words knowledge that has taken a theoretical attitude.

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p. 301
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
6 months ago
Were I a nightingale, I would...

Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I a swan, the part of a swan.

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Book I, ch. 16, 20.
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
4 months 1 week ago
The origin of things, considered not...

The origin of things, considered not as leading to anything, but in itself, contains the idea of First, the end of things that of Second, the process mediating between them that of Third. A philosophy which emphasises the idea of the One, is generally a dualistic philosophy in which the conception of Second receives exaggerated attention: for this One (though of course involving the idea of First) is always the other of a manifold which is not one. The idea of the Many, because variety is arbitrariness and arbitrariness is repudiation of any Secondness, has for its principal component the conception of First. In psychology Feeling is First, Sense of reaction Second, General conception Third, or mediation. In biology, the idea of arbitrary sporting is First, heredity is Second, the process whereby the accidental characters become fixed is Third. Chance is First, Law is Second, the tendency to take habits is Third. Mind is First, Matter is Second, Evolution is Third.

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Philosophical Maxims
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