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Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 1 week ago
The discussion of the sexual problem...

The discussion of the sexual problem is only a somewhat crude prelude to a far deeper question, and that is the question of the psychological relationship between the sexes. In comparison with this the other pales into insignificance, and with it we enter the real domain of woman. Woman's psychology is founded on the principle of Eros, the great binder and loosener, whereas from ancient times the ruling principle ascribed to man is Logos.

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P.254
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 2 weeks ago
The language of excitement is at...

The language of excitement is at best but picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 80
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
All government - indeed, every human...

All government - indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act - is founded on compromise and barter.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
Social and economic...
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Main Content / General
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 weeks 1 day ago
Gregorian chant, Romanesque architecture, the Iliad,...

Gregorian chant, Romanesque architecture, the Iliad, the invention of geometry were not, for the people through whom they were brought into being and made available to us, occasions for the manifestation of personality.

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p. 55
Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
1 month 1 week ago
I am using the word "perceive"....

I am using the word "perceive". I am using it here in such a way that to say of an object that it is perceived does not entail saying that it exists in any sense at all. And this is a perfectly correct and familiar usage of the word. If there is thought to be a difficulty here, it is perhaps because there is also a correct and familiar usage of the word "perceive", in which to say of an object that it is perceived does carry the implication that it exists.

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The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (1940).
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 2 weeks ago
On the other hand, the cheapest...

On the other hand, the cheapest form of pride is national pride; for the man affected therewith betrays a want of individual qualities of which he might be proud, since he would not otherwise resort to that which he shares with so many millions. The man who possesses outstanding personal qualities will rather see most clearly the faults of his own nation, for he has them constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool, who has nothing in the world whereof he could be proud, resorts finally to being proud of the very nation to which he belongs. In this he finds compensation and is now ready and thankful to defend, ... all the faults and follies peculiar to it.

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From 'Parerga and Paralipomena', Vol. 1, Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life, 'What A Man Represents', pp. 360
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 4 days ago
In this initial illimitableness of possibilities...

In this initial illimitableness of possibilities that characterizes one who has no nature there stands out only one fixed, pre-established, and given line by which he may chart his course, only one limit: the past.

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"Man has no nature"
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
4 weeks ago
What is morality in any given...

What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.

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Ch. 22, August 30, 1941.
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 3 days ago
The man who is tenacious….

The man who is tenacious of purpose in a rightful cause is not shaken from his firm resolve by the frenzy of his fellow citizens clamoring for what is wrong, or by the tyrant's threatening countenance.

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Book III, ode iii, line 1
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 3 weeks ago
Human knowledge and human power meet...

Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.

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Aphorism 3
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 week 4 days ago
We look at the present through...

We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 3 days ago
The way of Heaven and Earth...

The way of Heaven and Earth may be completely declared in one sentence: They are without any doubleness, and so they produce things in a manner that is unfathomable.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 1 week ago
The unconscious is not just evil...

The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, "divine."

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The Practice of Psychotherapy, p. 364
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
But genius looks forward: the eyes...

But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.

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par. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
The philosophy of Plotinus has the...

The philosophy of Plotinus has the defect of encouraging men to look within rather than to look without: when we look within we see nous, which is divine, while when we look without we see the imperfections of the sensible world. This kind of subjectivity was a gradual growth; it is to be found in the doctrines of Protagoras, Socrates, and Plato, as well as in the Stoics and Epicureans. But at first it was only doctrinal, not temperamental; for a long time it failed to kill scientific curiosity. [...] Plotinus is both an end and a beginning-an end as regards the Greeks, a beginning as regards Christendom.

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Russell, Bertrand (2008). History of Western Philosophy. Simon and Schuster. pp. 296-297. ISBN 978-1-4165-9915-9.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 week ago
The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is...

The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity, a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.

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Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
3 weeks 4 days ago
Care and responsibility are constituent elements...

Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness. Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his individuality and uniqueness. To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibility would be blind if they were not guided by the knowledge of the person's individuality.

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Ch. 3; in Ch. 2 of his later work The Art of Loving (1956) a similar statement is made :
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
My thought is me...

My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think ... and I can't prevent myself from thinking.

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Lundi ("Monday")
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
1 month 6 days ago
One must always maintain one's connection...

One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort.

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A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 1 week ago
What the Greeks sought, and what...

What the Greeks sought, and what they obtained, was Equal Rights for all Citizens. In a certain sense, we might even say Equal Privileges, for there was no race favoured by the constitution more than another;-but there existed a great inequality of power, which indeed arose only by accident and not by the constitution of the State, but which nevertheless the State could not remedy;-and in so far there did not exist Equal Privileges.

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p. 186
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 1 week ago
You have already grasped that Sisyphus...

You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture. His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing. This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth. Nothing is told us about Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths are made for the imagination to breathe life into them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plotinus
Plotinus
3 months 2 days ago
When the soul has descended into...

When the soul has descended into generation (from its first divine condition) she partakes of evil, and is carried a great way into a state the opposite of her first purity and integrity, to be entirely merged in which, is nothing more than to fall into a dark mire. ...The soul dies as much as it is possible for the soul to die: and the death to her is, while baptized or immersed in the present body, to descend into matter, and be wholly subjected by it; and after departing thence to lie there til it shall arise and turn its face away from the abhorrent filth. This is what is meant by falling asleep in Hades, of those who have come there.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month ago
Rousseau has said in his Emile...

Rousseau has said in his Emile (book iv.): "Even though philosophers should be in a position to discover the truth, which of them would take any interest in it? Each one knows well that his system is not better founded than the others, but he supports it because it is his. ...The essential thing is to think differently from others. With believers he is an atheist; with atheists he is a believer." How much substantial truth there is in these gloomy confessions of this man of painful sincerity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 6 days ago
The absolute idea is the subject...

The absolute idea is the subject in its final form, thought. The otherness and negation is the object, being. The absolute idea now has to be interpreted as objective being. Hegel's Logic thus ends where it began, with the category of being. This, however is a different being that can no longer be explained thought he concepts applied in the analysis that opened the Logic. For being now is understood in its notion that is, as a concrete totality wherein all particular forms subsist as the essential distinctions and relations of on comprehensive principle. Thus comprehended, being is nature, and dialectical thought passes on to the Philosophy of Nature.

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P. 165-166
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
1 month 4 days ago
The general fellowship of our human...

The general fellowship of our human situation has been rendered even more dubious than before, inasmuch as, though the old ties of caste have been loosened, a new restriction of the individual to some prescribed status in society is manifest. Less than ever, perhaps, is it possible for a man to transcend the limitations imposed by his social origins.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 2 weeks ago
Such taxes [upon the necessaries of...

Such taxes [upon the necessaries of life], when they have grown up to a certain height, are a curse equal to the barrenness of the earth and the inclemency of the heavens; and yet it is in the richest and most industrious countries that they have been most generally imposed. No other countries could support so great a disorder.

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Chapter II, paragraph 36, p. 500.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
2 months 2 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
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
Woes and wonders of power, that...

Woes and wonders of power, that tonic hell, synthesis of poison and panacea.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
In all persuasions the bigots are...

In all persuasions the bigots are persecutors; the men of a cool and reasonable piety are favourers of toleration; because the former sort of men not taking the pains to be acquainted with the grounds of their adversaries tenets, conceive them to be so absurd and monstrous, that no man of sense can give into them in good earnest. For which reason they are convinced that some oblique bad motive induces them to pretend to the belief of such doctrines, and to the maintaining of them with obstinacy. This is a very general principle in all religious differences, and it is the corner stone of all persecution.

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Volume II, p. 148
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 2 weeks ago
The tolls for the maintenance of...

The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.

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Chapter I, Part III, Article I, p. 786 (See also.. Public-private partnerships).
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 weeks 2 days ago
"If he is this good at...

"If he is this good at acting crazy, it's because he is." Nor is military psychology mistaken in this regard: in this sense, all crazy people simulate, and this lack of distinction is the worst kind of subversion. It is against this lack of distinction that classical reason armed itself in all its categories. But it is what today again outflanks them, submerging the principle of truth.

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"The Precession of Simulacra," p. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
I find men victims of illusion...

I find men victims of illusion in all parts of life. Children, youths, adults, and old men, all are led by one bawble or another. Yoganidra, the goddess of illusion, Proteus, or Momus, or Gylfi's Mocking, - for the Power has many names, - is stronger than the Titans, stronger than Apollo.

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Illusions
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
2 months 4 days ago
Consciousness is what makes the mind-body...

Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.

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p. 165.
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
2 months 1 week ago
Real power begins where secrecy begins....

Real power begins where secrecy begins.

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Part 3, Ch. 12, § 1
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 week 4 days ago
If we sit and talk in...

If we sit and talk in a dark room, words suddenly acquire new meanings and different textures...and on the radio. Given only the sound of a play, we have to fill in all of the senses, not just the sight of the action. So much do-it-yourself, or completion and "closure" of action, develops a kind of independent isolation in the young that makes them remote and inaccessible.

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(p. 264)
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 week 6 days ago
The Anarchists are right in everything;...

The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without authority, there could not be worse violence than that of authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. "To establish Anarchy." "Anarchy will be instituted." But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require protection from governmental power, and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power.

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"On Anarchy", in Pamphlets : Translated from the Russian (1900) as translated by Aylmer Maude, p. 22
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 4 days ago
Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps...

Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps over the carpets of Aristippus. The cynic pullulated at every corner, and in the highest places. This cynic did nothing but saboter the civilisation of the time. He was the nihilist of Hellenism. He created nothing, he made nothing. His role was to undo - or rather to attempt to undo, for he did not succeed in his purpose. The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. What would become of the cynic among a savage people where everyone, naturally and quite seriously, fulfils what the cynic farcically considers to be his personal role?

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Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month ago
Religion is better described than defined...

Religion is better described than defined and better felt than described. But if there is any one definition that latterly has obtained acceptance, it is that of Schleiermacher, to the effect that religion consists in the simple feeling of a relationship of dependence upon something above us and a desire to establish relations with this mysterious power.

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Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
2 months 3 weeks ago
I think, therefore I am.

I think, therefore I am.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
3 months 1 week ago
This is the end of the...

This is the end of the web of the statesman activity: the direct interweaving of the characters of restrained and courageous men, when the kingly science has drawn them together by friendship and community of sentiment into a common life, and having perfected the most glorious and the best of all textures, clothes with it all the inhabitants of the state, both slaves and freemen, holds them together by this fabric, and omitting nothing which ought to belong to a happy state, rules and watches over them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
Not to be absolutely certain is,...

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality. 

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"Don't Be Too Certain!"
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
3 months 1 week ago
Rhetoric, it seems, is a producer...

Rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong. And so the rhetorician's business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 weeks 6 days ago
Faculty X is simply that latent...

Faculty X is simply that latent power in human beings possess to reach beyond the present. After all, we know perfectly well that the past is as real as the present, and that New York and Singapore and Lhasa and Stepney Green are all as real as the place I happen to be in at the moment. Yet my senses do not agree. They assure me that this place, here and now, is far more real than any other place or any other time. Only in certain moments of great inner intensity do I know this to be a lie. Faculty X is a sense of reality, the reality of other places and other times, and it is the possession of it - fragmentary and uncertain though it is - that distinguishes man from all other animals.

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p. 59
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 6 days ago
His master was angry, and delivered...

His master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. "So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses."

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18:34-35
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
To be without some of the...

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 week 4 days ago
Faced with information overload, we have...

Faced with information overload, we have no alternative but pattern-recognition.

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(p. 132)
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 5 days ago
As we shall see later, the...

As we shall see later, the most important factor in the training of good mental habits consists in acquiring the attitude of suspended conclusion, and in mastering the various methods of searching for new materials to corroborate or to refute the first suggestions that occur. To maintain the state of doubt and to carry on systematic and protracted inquiry ― these are the essentials of thinking.

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Chapter 1: "What Is Thought?"
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 2 weeks ago
The king Frederic has sent me...

The king Frederic has sent me some of his dirty linen to wash; I will wash yours another time.

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Reply to General Manstein. Voltaire writes to his niece Dennis, July 24, 1752, "Voilà le roi qui m'envoie son linge à blanchir"; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed.,1919
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Hitch your wagon to a star....

Hitch your wagon to a star.

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Civilization
Philosophical Maxims
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