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Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 week ago
With much care and skill power...

With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs.

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Chapter V.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
3 months 1 week ago
The first remark we have to...

The first remark we have to make, and which - though already presented more than once - cannot be too often repeated when the occasion seems to call for it, - is that what we call principle, aim, destiny, or the nature and idea of Spirit, is something merely general and abstract. Principle - Plan of Existence - Law - is a hidden, undeveloped essence, which as such - however true in itself - is not completely real.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 3 weeks ago
There is something between the gross...

There is something between the gross specialised values of the mere practical man, and the thin specialised values of the mere scholar. Both types have missed something; and if you add together the two sets of values, you do not obtain the missing elements.

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Ch. 13: "Requisites for Social Progress", p. 279
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 1 week ago
The reasons and purposes for habits...
The reasons and purposes for habits are always lies that are added only after some people begin to attack these habits and to ask for reasons and purposes. At this point the conservatives of all ages are thoroughly dishonest: they add lies.
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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 1 week ago
If there is one realm in...

If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can't deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 1 week ago
As we passed under the last...

As we passed under the last bridge over the canal, just before reaching the Merrimack, the people coming out of church paused to look at us from above, and apparently, so strong is custom, indulged in some heathenish comparisons; but we were the truest observers of this sunny day.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
2 months 6 days ago
Of escape there are but three...

Of escape there are but three methods - two chimerical and a third real. The first two are the dram-shop and the church, debauchery of the body or debauchery of the mind; the third is social revolution.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 months 1 day ago
For the Lawes of Nature (as...

For the Lawes of Nature (as Justice, Equity, Modesty, Mercy, and (in summe)doing to others, as wee would be done to,) of themselves, without the terrour of some Power, to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our naturall Passions, that carry us to Partiality, Pride, Revenge, and the like. And Covenants, without the Sword, are but Words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.

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The Second Part, Chapter 17, p. 85
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
2 days ago
I think I….

I think I have already said somewhere that mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.

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Part I. Ch. 2 : The Future of Mathematics, p. 31
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 4 days ago
It is the duty...
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Main Content / General
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 1 week ago
The freest importation of salt provisions,...

The freest importation of salt provisions, in the same manner, could have as little effect upon the interest of the graziers of Great Britain as that of live cattle. Salt provisions are not only a very bulky commodity, but when compared with fresh meat, they are a commodity both of worse quality, and as they cost more labour and expence, of higher price. They could never, therefore, come into competition with the fresh meat, though they might with the salt provisions of the country.

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Chapter II
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
3 months 1 week ago
Remorse sleeps...

Remorse sleeps during a prosperous period but wakes up in adversity. 

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Variant translations: Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity. Remorse goes to sleep during a prosperous period and wakes up in adversity.
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
3 days ago
It is hard to see how...

It is hard to see how the discarding of liberal values is going to lead to anything in the long term other than increasing social conflict and ultimately a return to violence as a means of resolving differences.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 1 week 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
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
2 days ago
My purpose is to set forth...

My purpose is to set forth a very new science dealing with a very ancient subject. There is, in nature, perhaps nothing older than motion, concerning which the books written by philosophers are neither few nor small; nevertheless I have discovered by experiment some properties of it which are worth knowing and which have not hitherto been either observed or demonstrated. Some superficial observations have been made, as, for instance, that the free motion [naturalem motum] of a heavy falling body is continuously accelerated; but to just what extent this acceleration occurs has not yet been announced; for so far as I know, no one has yet pointed out that the distances traversed, during equal intervals of time, by a body falling from rest, stand to one another in the same ratio as the odd numbers beginning with unity.

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Author, Third Day. Change of Position
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 1 week ago
Universal is known according to reason,...

Universal is known according to reason, but that which is particular, according to sense...

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Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
3 months 3 days ago
You can't lead the people if...

You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people, if you don't serve the people.

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Hope on a Tightrope: Words and Wisdom (2008); also on "The Way I See It" Starbucks Coffee Cup #284
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 1 week ago
All state obligations are against the...

All state obligations are against the conscience of a Christian: the oath of allegiance, taxes, law proceedings and military service.

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Chapter VII, Significance of Compulsory Service
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 1 week ago
It is wrong to think that...

It is wrong to think that belief in freedom always leads to victory; we must always be prepared for it to lead to defeat. If we choose freedom, then we must be prepared to perish along with it. Poland fought for freedom as no other country did. The Czech nation was prepared to fight for its freedom in 1938; it was not lack of courage that sealed its fate. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 - the work of young people with nothing to lose but their chains - triumphed and then ended in failure. ... Democracy and freedom do not guarantee the millennium. No, we do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things - and above all on ourselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 1 week ago
For in spite of language, in...

For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.

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"Sermons in Cats"
Philosophical Maxims
David Wood
David Wood
2 weeks 3 days ago
What I would like to show...

What I would like to show is that there is a vital dimension of their writing, which I call performative reflexivity, which if ignored or misunderstood will impede an adequate response to it.

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Chapter 8, Performative Reflexivity, p. 134
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 6 days ago
Avarice is as destitute of what...

Avarice is as destitute of what it has, as what it has not.

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Maxim 927
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 5 days ago
The world and the universe is...

The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear. It is an immensely exciting experience to be born in the world, born in the universe, and look around you and realise that before you die you have the opportunity of understanding an immense amount about that world and about that universe and about life and about why we're here. We have the opportunity of understanding far, far more than any of our predecessors ever. That is such an exciting possibility, it would be such a shame to blow it and end your life not having understood what there is to understand.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 1 week ago
I wanted for the moments in...

I wanted for the moments in my life to follow each other and order themselves like those of a life remembered. It would be just as well to try to catch time by the tail.

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
1 month 3 weeks ago
Impulse, subjectivity and profanation, the old...

Impulse, subjectivity and profanation, the old adversaries of materialistic alienation, now succumb to it. ... The representatives of the opposition to the authoritarian schema become witnesses to the authority of commercial success. ... In the service of success they renounce that insubordinate character which was theirs.

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p. 273
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 2 weeks ago
Sacred and inspired divinity, the sabaoth...

Sacred and inspired divinity, the sabaoth and port of all men's labours and peregrinations.

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Book II
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 month 1 day ago
The book of the world, so...

The book of the world, so richly studied by autodidacts, is being closed by the "learned," who are raising walls of opinions to shut the world out.

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p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 5 days ago
Thus I progressed on the surface...

Thus I progressed on the surface of life, in the realm of words as it were, never in reality. All those books barely read, those friends barely loved, those cities barely visited, those women barely possessed! I went through the gestures out of boredom or absent-mindedness. Then came the human beings, they wanted to cling, but there was nothing to cling to, and that was unfortunate for them. As for me, I forgot. I never remembered anything but myself.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 1 week ago
'But what of the poor Ghosts...

But what of the poor Ghosts who never get into the omnibus at all?' 'Everyone who wishes it does. Never fear. There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.

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Ch. 9, p. 72; part of this has also been rendered in a variant form, and quoted as:
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 months 5 days ago
How can a past idea be...

How can a past idea be present?... it can only be going, infinitesimally past, less past than any assignable past date. We are thus brought to the conclusion that the present is connected to the past by a series of real infinitesimal steps.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
It must not be supposed that...

It must not be supposed that this conflict is, on the part of the Teuton, aggressive in substance, whatever it may be in form. In substance it is defensive, the attempt to preserve Central Europe for a type of civilisation indubitably higher and of more value to mankind than that of any Slav State. The existence of the Russian menace on the Eastern border is, quite legitimately, a nightmare to Germany.

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War: The Offspring of Fear (1914), quoted in Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude, 1872-1921 (1996), p. 373
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
1 month 4 weeks ago
The basic word I-Thou can be...

The basic word I-Thou can be spoken only with one's whole being. The concentration and fusion into a whole being can never be accomplished by me, can never be accomplished without me. I require a Thou to become; becoming I, I say Thou.

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Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
2 months ago
I daresay anything can be made...

I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.

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The Message to the Planet (1989) p. 322.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 4 days ago
At this very moment, I am...

At this very moment, I am suffering - as we say in French, j'ai mal. This event, crucial for me, is nonexistent, even inconceivable for anyone else, for everyone else. Except for God, if that word can have a meaning.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 1 week ago
All that I know about my...

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

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Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
1 month 3 weeks ago
As more and more women acquired...

As more and more women acquired prestige, fame, or money from feminist writings or from gains from feminist movement for equality in the workforce, individual opportunism undermined appeals for collective struggle. Women who were not opposed to patriarchy, capitalism, classism, or racism labeled themselves "feminist." Their expectations were varied. Privileged women wanted social equality with men of their class; some women wanted equal pay for equal work; others wanted an alternative lifestyle. Many of these legitimate concerns were easily co-opted by the ruling capitalist patriarchy.

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p. 7.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 2 weeks ago
Courage, garrulousness and the mob are...

Courage, garrulousness and the mob are on our side. What more do we want?

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E 32
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
1 day ago
Marxism has been the greatest fantasy...

Marxism has been the greatest fantasy of our century. It was a dream offering the prospect of a society of perfect unity, in which all human aspirations would be fulfilled and all values reconciled.

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Epilogue, p. 1206
Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
2 months 5 days ago
While moral rules may be propounded...

While moral rules may be propounded by authority the fact that these were so propounded would not validate them.

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"The Meaning of Life".
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 4 days ago
A good guide will take you...

A good guide will take you through the more important streets more often than he takes you down side streets; a bad guide will do the opposite. In philosophy I'm a rather bad guide.

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As quoted in Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Information (2008) edited by Alois Pichler and Herbert Hrachovec, p. 140
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 1 week ago
To challenge and to cope with...

To challenge and to cope with this paradoxical state of things, we need a paradoxical way of thinking; since the world drifts into delirium, we must adopt a delirious point of view. We must no longer assume any principle of truth, of causality, or any discursive norm. Instead, we must grant both the poetic singularity of events and the radical uncertainty of events. It is not easy. We usually think that holding to the protocols of experimentation and verification is the most difficult thing. But in fact the most difficult thing is to renounce the truth and the possibility of verification, to remain as long as possible on the enigmatic, ambivalent, and reversible side of thought.

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The Vital Illusion (2000) "The Murder of the Real". Wellek Library Lectures given May 1999 at the University of California, Irvine
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 4 days ago
The only thing the young should...

The only thing the young should be taught is that there is virtually nothing to be hoped for from life. One dreams of a Catalogue of Disappointments which would include all the disillusionments reserved for each and every one of us, to be posted in the schools.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 1 week ago
Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt...

Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out.

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Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
3 months 4 weeks ago
Of our desires some are natural...

Of our desires some are natural and necessary, others are natural but not necessary; and others are neither natural nor necessary, but are due to groundless opinion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
7 months 2 weeks ago
Hollywood, an ideological state apparatus

At the beginning of November 2001, there was a series of meetings between White House advisers and senior Hollywood executives with the aim of coordinating the war effort and establishing how Hollywood could help in the "war against terrorism" by getting the right ideological message across not only to Americans, but also to the Hollywood public around the globe — the ultimate empirical proof that Hollywood does in fact function as an "ideological state apparatus."

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 1 week ago
Psychologists have hitherto failed to realize...

Psychologists have hitherto failed to realize that imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself.

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A 120
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
Instinctively we divide mankind into friends...

Instinctively we divide mankind into friends and foes - friends, towards whom we have the morality of co-operation; foes, towards whom we have that of competition. But this division is constantly changing; at one moment a man hates his business competitor, at another, when both are threatened by Socialism or by an external enemy, he suddenly begins to view him as a brother. Always when we pass beyond the limits of the family it is the external enemy which supplies the cohesive force. In times of safety we can afford to hate our neighbour, but in times of danger we must love him.

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Authority and the Individual, 1949
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 2 weeks ago
But by far the greatest obstacle...

But by far the greatest obstacle to the progress of science and to the undertaking of new tasks and provinces therein is found in this - that men despair and think things impossible.

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Aphorism 92
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
3 months 4 days ago
The critique of the highest values...

The critique of the highest values hitherto does not simply refute them or declare them invalid. It is rather a matter of displaying their origins as impositions which must affirm precisely what ought to be negated by the values established.

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p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 1 week ago
Capacity for the nobler feelings is...

Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by the mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in existence.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
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