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Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 4 days ago
A little time, and thou shalt...

A little time, and thou shalt close thy eyes; and him who has attended thee to thy grave, another soon will lament.

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X, 34
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 2 weeks ago
There are some remedies worse than...

There are some remedies worse than the disease.

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Maxim 301
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 weeks ago
One is still what one is...

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, one dies one's life.

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Book 2, "The Melodious Child Dead in Me"
Philosophical Maxims
chanakya
chanakya
2 months 1 day ago
There is no disease so destructive...

There is no disease so destructive as lust.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 3 weeks ago
There is needed, no doubt, a...

There is needed, no doubt, a body of servants (ministerium) of the invisible church, but not officials (officiales), in other words, teachers but not dignitaries, because in the rational religion of every individual there does not yet exist a church as a universal union (omnitudo collectiva).

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Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, "The Christian religion as a natural religion"
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 1 week ago
When a man at forty...

When a man at forty is the object of dislike, he will always continue what he is.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
The state of health is a...

The state of health is a state of nonsensation, even of nonreality. As soon as we cease to suffer, we cease to exist.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 3 weeks ago
I look upon you as a...

I look upon you as a gem of the old rock. Dedication

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Self-knowledge - the bitterest knowledge of...

Self-knowledge - the bitterest knowledge of all and also the kind we cultivate least: what is the use of catching ourselves out, morning to night, in the act of illusion, pitilessly tracing each act back to its root, and losing case after case before our own tribunal?

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
4 months 2 weeks ago
Everywhere we remain unfree and chained...

Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology.

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The Question Concerning Technology
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 5 days ago
However, the disappearance of domination does...

However, the disappearance of domination does not entail freedom. Instead, it makes freedom and constraint coincide. Thus, the achievement-subject gives itself over to compulsive freedom--that is, to the free constraint of maximizing achievement. Excess work and performance escalate into auto-exploitation.

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Source: Page 11
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 1 day ago
Neither did the dispensation of God...

Neither did the dispensation of God vary in the times after our Saviour came into the world; for our Saviour himself did first show His power to subdue ignorance, by His conference with the priests and doctors of the law, before He showed His power to subdue nature by His miracles. And the coming of this Holy Spirit was chiefly figured and expressed in the similitude and gift of tongues, which are but vehicula scientiæ.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 3 weeks ago
Men think it right to eat...

Men think it right to eat animals, because they are led to believe that God sanctions it. This is untrue. No matter in what books it may be written that it is not sinful to slay animals and to eat them, it is more clearly written in the heart of man than in any books that animals are to be pitied and should not be slain any more than human beings. We all know this if we do not choke the voice of our conscience.

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The Pathway of Life: Teaching Love and Wisdom (posthumous), Part I, International Book Publishing Company, New York, 1919, p. 68
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 4 days ago
Never let the future disturb you....

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

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VII, 8 (Penguin Classics edition of Meditations, translated by Maxwell Staniforth)
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 2 weeks ago
There is no mystery in humans...

There is no mystery in humans creation. Will performs this miracle. But at least there is no true creation without a secret.

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Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
5 months 1 week ago
How long will men dare to...

How long will men dare to call anything expedient that is not right? Can odium and infamy be of service to any empire, which ought to be supported by glory and by the good-will of its allies? I was often at variance even with my friend Cato. He seemed to me to guard the treasury and the revenues too obstinately, to refuse everything to the farmers of the revenue, and many things to our allies; while we ought to be generous to our allies, and to deal with the farmers of the revenue as leniently as we individually do with our own tenants, especially as the union of orders to which such a course would conduce is for the well-being of the state.

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Book III, Sect. 22, as translated by Andrew P. Peabody
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 3 weeks ago
People continued - regardless of all...

People continued - regardless of all that leads man forward - to try to unite the incompatibles : the virtue of love, and what is opposed to love, namely, the restraining of evil by violence. And such a teaching, despite its inner contradiction, was so firmly established that the very people who recognize love as a virtue accept as lawful at the same time an order of life based on violence and allowing men not merely to torture but even to kill one another.

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III
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 months 1 week ago
The new order contradicts reason so...

The new order contradicts reason so fundamentally that reason does not dare to doubt it. Even the consciousness of oppression fades. The more incommensurate become the concentration of power and the helplessness of the individual, the more difficult for him to penetrate the human origin of his misery.

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p. 44.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
If the colleges were better, if...

If the colleges were better, if they ... had the power of imparting valuable thought, creative principles, truths which become powers, thoughts which become talents, - if they could cause that a mind not profound should become profound, - we should all rush to their gates: instead of contriving inducements to draw students, you would need to set policy at the gates to keep order in the in-rushing multitude.

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The Celebration of Intellect, 1861
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 3 weeks ago
A difference which makes no difference...

A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.

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As quoted in William James: The Essential Writings (1971), edited by Bruce W. Wilshire, p. xiii
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 6 days ago
We give voice….

We give voice to our trivial cares, but suffer enormities in silence.

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line 607; (Phaedra)
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 2 weeks ago
To have time was at once...

To have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 3 weeks ago
Long hours of labour seem to...

Long hours of labour seem to be the secret of the rational and healthful processes, which are to raise the condition of the labourer by an improvement of his mental and moral powers and to make a rational consumer out of him.

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Vol. II, Ch. XXI, p. 520.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 weeks ago
If we cut up beasts simply...

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

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"Vivisection" (1947), p. 227
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
3 months 1 week ago
Only lies and evil come from...

Only lies and evil come from letting people off.

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A Severed Head (1961); 1976, p. 61.
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 month 3 days ago
Over the years it has become...

Over the years it has become my firm opinion that sexual activity (even if only through masturbation) is "requisite and necessary, as well for the body as for the soul"; for men and women alike. It stimulates your glands, exercises your pelvis, thrills your nerves, brings mind and body together as one, and culminates in an ecstasy in which there is neither past nor future nor separation between self and other. We need that as we need vitamins, proteins, water, and air.

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p. 122
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 3 weeks ago
Be gentle with them, Timothy. They...

Be gentle with them, Timothy. They want to be free, but they don't know how. Teach them. Reassure them.

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Reported to be Huxley's last words to Timothy Leary, which Huxley whispered from his deathbed. Quoted in Leary, Timothy (1990) . "Life on a Grounded Space Colony".
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 3 weeks ago
With Leibnitz the extent to which...

With Leibnitz the extent to which thoughts advance is the extent of the universe; where comprehension ceases, the universe ceases, and God begins: so that later it was even maintained that to be comprehended was derogatory to God, because He was thus degraded into finitude. In that procedure a beginning is made from the determinate, this and that are stated to be necessary; but since in the next place the unity of these moments is not comprehended, it is transferred to God. God is therefore, as it were, the waste channel into which all contradictions flow: Leibnitz's Théodicée is just a popular summing up such as this.

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Third division, Chapter I. - The Metaphysics of the Understanding Alternate translation: "God is, as it were, the sewer into which all contradictions flow."
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 3 weeks ago
Do not resist the evil-doer and...

Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the world will be able to enslave you.

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V. "Do not resist the evil-doer" is an allusion to the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 5:39.
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 3 weeks ago
Good and strong will. Mechanism must...

Good and strong will. Mechanism must precede science (learning). Also in morals and religion? Too much discipline makes one narrow and kills proficiency. Politeness belongs, not to discipline, but to polish, and thus comes last.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 9
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
Mysticism is, in essence, little more...

Mysticism is, in essence, little more than a certain intensity and depth of feeling in regard to what is believed about the universe.

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Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 weeks ago
Generosity is nothing else than a...

Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away.... To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.

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Part 2
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is a bad thing to...

It is a bad thing to perform menial duties even for the sake of freedom; to fight with pinpricks, instead of with clubs. I have become tired of hypocrisy, stupidity, gross arbitrariness, and of our bowing and scraping, dodging, and hair-splitting over words. Consequently, the government has given me back my freedom.

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Letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge (25 January 1843)
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 3 days ago
Power is the near neighbour of...

Power is the near neighbour of necessity.

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As quoted in Aurea Carmina (8) by Hierocles of Alexandria, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 356
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 2 weeks ago
We are living in what the...

We are living in what the Greeks called the right time for a "metamorphosis of the gods," i.e. of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science.

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p 110
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
3 weeks 1 day ago
My God and I are horsemen...

My God and I are horsemen galloping in the burning sun or under drizzling rain. Pale, starving, but unsubdued, we ride and converse. "Leader!" I cry. He turns his face toward me, and I shudder to confront his anguish. Our love for each other is rough and ready, we sit at the same table, we drink the same wine in this low tavern of life.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is the magician's bargain: give...

It is the magician's bargain: give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 weeks ago
Unlike previous environmental changes, the electric...

Unlike previous environmental changes, the electric media constitutes a total and near-instanteous transformation of culture, values and attitudes.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 3 weeks ago
Lord Jesus Christ, the birds had...

Lord Jesus Christ, the birds had nests, the foxes had dens, and you had no place where you could lay your head. You were homeless in the world-yet you yourself were a hiding place, the only place where the sinner could flee. And so even this very day you are a hiding place. When the sinner flees to you, hides himself with you, is hidden in you, he is eternally kept safe, since love hides a multitude of sins.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 3 weeks ago
... people only count their misfortunes;...

... people only count their misfortunes; their good luck they take no account of. But if they were to take everything into account, as they should, they'd find that they had their fair share of it.

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Part 2, Chapter 6 (tr. ?)
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months 2 weeks ago
I bow before the authority of...

I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason. I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give - such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 1 day ago
Man is a masterpiece of creation...

Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.

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J 249
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 3 weeks ago
And what is it in us...

And what is it in us that is mellowed by civilization? All it does, I'd say, is to develop in man a capacity to feel a greater variety of sensations. And nothing, absolutely nothing else. And through this development, man will yet learn how to enjoy bloodshed. Why, it has already happened....Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty.

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Part 1, Chapter 7
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
3 months 2 weeks ago
Taught from their infancy that beauty...

Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

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Ch. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
What strength belongs to every plant...

What strength belongs to every plant and animal in nature. The tree or the brook has no duplicity, no pretentiousness, no show. It is, with all its might and main, what it is, and makes one and the same impression and effect at all times. All the thoughts of a turtle are turtles, and of a rabbit, rabbits. But a man is broken and dissipated by the giddiness of his will; he does not throw himself into his judgments; his genius leads him one way but 't is likely his trade or politics in quite another.

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"The Natural History of Intellect", p. 46
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 2 weeks ago
Any artist should be grateful for...

Any artist should be grateful for a naïve grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

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Foreword to The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 days ago
Enough had been thought....
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Main Content / General
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 3 weeks ago
All those to whom I looked...

All those to whom I looked up, were of opinion that the pleasure of sympathy with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others, and especially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence, were the greatest and surest sources of happiness. Of the truth of this I was convinced, but to know that a feeling would make me happy if I had it, did not give me the feeling.

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(p. 138)
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
1 month 2 weeks ago
In 1903 there appeared Problems of...

In 1903 there appeared Problems of Idealism, a collection of essays many of whose authors had recently been Marxists, but which condemned Marxism and materialism for their moral nihilism, contempt of personality, determinism, and fanatical pursuit of social values regardless of the individuals who made up society; they also attacked Marxism for its uncritical worship of progress and sacrifice of the present to the future.

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(pp. 420-1)
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 3 weeks ago
To be aware of limitations is...

To be aware of limitations is already to be beyond them.

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As quoted in Inwardness and Existence (1989) by Walter A. Davis, p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
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