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Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 month 3 weeks ago
We may assume the existence...

We may assume the existence of an aether; only we must give up ascribing a definite state of motion to it, i.e. we must by abstraction take from it the last mechanical characteristic which Lorentz had still left it. ... But this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable media, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it.

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On the irrelevance of the luminiferous aether hypothesis to physical measurements, in [https://www.refcm.org/scripture-science-stott/aarch/pages/12-einstein-sidelights-relativity.htm an address at the University of Leiden (5 May 1920)]
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 weeks ago
They indicate the saddest spiritual paralysis,...

They indicate the saddest spiritual paralysis, and mere death-life of the souls of men: more godless theory, I think, was never promulgated in this Earth. A false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house!

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 days ago
Under no pretext....
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Main Content / General
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 3 weeks ago
God is not needed to create...

God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
6 months 2 weeks ago
Those of our pleasures which come...

Those of our pleasures which come most rarely give the greatest delight.

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Fragment 33 (Oldfather translation)
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
2 months 1 week ago
The most strongly enforced of all...

The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.

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Inside Information
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
4 months 1 week ago
I might try to save the...

I might try to save the view that 'future contingents' have no truth value by saying that even present-tense statements have no truth value if they refer to the outcome of events that are so far away that a causal signal informing me of the outcome could not have reached me-now without traveling faster than light. In other words, I might attempt saying that statements about events that are in neither the upper half nor the lower half of my light-cone have no truth value. In addition, statements about events in the upper half of my light-cone have no truth value, since they are in my future according to every coordinate system. So only statements about events in the lower half of my light-cone have a truth value; only events that are in 'my past* according to all observers are determined.

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Time and physical geometry
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
6 months 5 days ago
The value which the workmen add...

The value which the workmen add to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this case into two parts, of which the one pays their wages, the other the profits of the employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he advanced.

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Chapter VI, p. 58.
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
6 months ago
All that the conscious ego can...

All that the conscious ego can do is to formulate wishes, which are then carried out by forces which it controls very little and understands not at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
4 months 3 weeks ago
The woman who fights against her...

The woman who fights against her father still has the possibility of leading an instinctive, feminine existence, because she rejects only what is alien to her. But when she fights against the mother she may, at the risk of injury to her instincts, attain to greater consciousness, because in repudiating the mother she repudiates all that is obscure, instinctive, ambiguous, and unconscious in her own nature.

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"Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P. 186
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
4 months 3 weeks ago
We return to our analysis of...

We return to our analysis of qualities. Something preserves itself throughout this flux, something that passes into other things, but also stands against them as a being for itself. This something can exist only as the product of a process through which it integrates its otherness with its own proper being. Hegel says that its existence comes about through 'the negation of the negation.' The first negation is the otherness in which it turns, and the second is the incorporation of this other into its own self. Such a process presupposes that things possess a certain power over their movement, that they exist in a certain self-relation that enables them to 'mediate' their existential conditions.

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P. 132-133
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
6 months 2 weeks ago
Anger is a weed....

Anger is a weed; hate is the tree.

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58 Alternate versions: Anger is a stem, hate is a trunk. Anger is the mote, hate is the beam.
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
4 months 3 weeks 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
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl
2 months 1 week ago
Important though the general concepts and...

Important though the general concepts and propositions may be with which the modern industrious passion for axiomatizing and generalizing has presented us, in algebra perhaps more than anywhere else, nevertheless I am convinced that the special problems in all their complexity constitute the stock and core of mathematics; and to master their difficulties requires on the whole the harder labor.

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The Classical Groups
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 2 weeks ago
Attention consists of suspending our thought,...

Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make use of.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 months 1 day ago
Nature paints the best part of...

Nature paints the best part of a picture, carves the best parts of the statue, builds the best part of the house, and speaks the best part of the oration.

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Art
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
3 months 1 week ago
No amount of happiness enjoyed by...

No amount of happiness enjoyed by some organisms can notionally justify the indescribable horrors of Auschwitz. [...] Nor can the fun and games outweigh the sporadic frightfulness of pain and despair that occurs every second of every day. For there's nothing inherently wrong with non-sentience or [...] non-existence; whereas there is something frightfully and self-intimatingly wrong with suffering.

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2.7 Why Be Negative?
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
2 months 2 weeks ago
Live always in the best company...

Live always in the best company when you read.

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Vol. I, ch. 10, p. 370
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 2 days ago
No man is liberated from fear...

No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is; no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.

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Dreams and Facts, 1919
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
6 months 3 days ago
Ancient histories…

Ancient histories, as one of our wits has said, are but fables that have been agreed upon.

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Jeannot et Colin, 1764
Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
6 months 4 days 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
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
6 months 5 days ago
I have seen something of the...

I have seen something of the project of M. de St. Pierre, for maintaining a perpetual peace in Europe. I am reminded of a device in a cemetery, with the words: Pax perpetua; for the dead do not fight any longer: but the living are of another humor; and the most powerful do not respect tribunals at all. 

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Taken from Leibniz: Political Writings (2nd Edition, 1988), Edited by Patrick RileyLetter 11 to Grimarest: Passages Concerning the Abbe de St. Pierre's 'Project for Perpetual Peace' (June 1712).
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
5 months 5 days ago
How old the world is...

How old the world is! I walk between two eternities... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, that valley digging its channel ever deeper, that forest that is tottering and those great masses above my head about to fall? I see the marble of tombs crumbling into dust; and yet I don't want to die!

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Salon of 1767 (1798), Oeuvres esthétiques
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
5 months 1 day ago
The death clock is ticking slowly...

The death clock is ticking slowly in our breast, and each drop of blood measures its time, and our life is a lingering fever.

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Act II.
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
6 months 2 weeks ago
Who dismisses his adulterous wife and...

Who dismisses his adulterous wife and marries another woman, whereas his first wife still lives, remains perpetually in the state of adultery. Such a man does not any efficacious penance while he refuses to abandon the new wife. If he is a catechumen, he cannot be admitted to baptism, because his will remains rooted in the evil. If he is a (baptized) penitent, he cannot receive the (ecclesiastical) reconciliation as long as he does not break with his bad attitude.

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De adulterinis coniugiis, 2, 16, in Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Reaction to Synod Door to communion for divorced & remarried officially kicked open, November 2nd, 2015
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 4 weeks ago
Very little is needed to make...

Very little is needed to make a happy life.

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VII, 67
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 4 weeks ago
Remember that the term Rational was...

Remember that the term Rational was intended to signify a discriminating attention to every several thing and freedom from negligence; and that Equanimity is the voluntary acceptance of things which are assigned to thee by the common nature; and the Magnanimity is the elevation of the intelligent part above the pleasurable or painful sensations of the flesh, and above that poor thing called fame, and death, and all such things. If then, thou maintainest thyself in the possession of these names, without desiring to be called by these names by others, thou wilt be another person and wilt enter into another life.

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X, 8
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 4 weeks ago
There is a real, living unity...

There is a real, living unity in our time, as in any other, but it lies submerged under a superficial hubbub of sensation.

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Letter to Harold Adam Innis (14 March 1951), published in Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 223
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
4 months 3 weeks ago
Because energy is not restrained by...

Because energy is not restrained by other elements that are at once antagonistic and cooperative, action proceeds by jerks and spasms. There is discontinuity.

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p. 189
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
5 months 3 weeks ago
The kind of equality utilitarianism supports...

The kind of equality utilitarianism supports is given by Bentham's formula...: 'everybody to count for one, and nobody for more than one'...Utilitarianism seeks to maximize happiness, and in deciding how to calculate whether happiness is being maximized, no one's pleasures or pains should count for less because they are peasants rather than aristocrats, slaves rather than slave-owners, Africans rather than Europeans, poor rather than rich, illiterates rather than doctors of philosophy, children rather than adults, females rather than males, or even, as we have seen, non-human animals rather than human beings.

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p. 349
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 3 weeks ago
What is that one crucifixion compared...

What is that one crucifixion compared to the daily kind any insomniac endures?

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
6 months ago
I am to talk about Apologetics....

I am to talk about Apologetics. Apologetics means of course Defence. The first question is - what do you propose to defend? Christianity, of course...

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"Christian Apologetics" (1945), p. 89
Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
4 months 3 weeks ago
To confuse our own constructions and...

To confuse our own constructions and inventions with eternal laws or divine decrees is one of the most fatal delusions of men. 

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Essays in Honour of E. H. Carr (1974) edited by Chimen Abramsky, p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 1 day ago
The wise will determine from the...

The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable from sensibility to oppression; the high-minded from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
4 months 2 weeks ago
The history of the American kings...

The history of the American kings of capital and authority is the history of repeated crimes, injustice, oppression, outrage, and abuse, all aiming at the suppression of individual liberties and the exploitation of the people. A vast country, rich enough to supply all her children with all possible comforts, and insure well-being to all, is in the hands of a few, while the nameless millions are at the mercy of ruthless wealth gatherers, unscrupulous lawmakers, and corrupt politicians.The reign of these kings is holding mankind in slavery, perpetuating poverty and disease, maintaining crime and corruption; it is fettering the spirit of liberty, throttling the voice of justice, and degrading and oppressing humanity. It is engaged in continual war and slaughter, devastating the country and destroying the best and finest qualities of man; it nurtures superstition and ignorance, sows prejudice and strife, and turns the human family into a camp of Ishmaelites.

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Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
5 months 3 weeks ago
When people laughed at him because...

When people laughed at him because he walked backward beneath the portico, he said to them: "Aren't you ashamed, you who walk backward along the whole path of existence, and blame me for walking backward along the path of the promenade?"

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Stobaeus, iii. 4. 83
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
6 months 1 day ago
It is not because men's desires...

It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.

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On Liberty, 1859
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 3 weeks ago
I don't understand how people can...

I don't understand how people can believe in God, even when I myself think of him everyday.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
4 months 2 weeks ago
My life - I had lived...

My life - I had lived in its heights and its depths, in bitter sorrow and ecstatic joy, in black despair and fervent hope. I had drunk the cup to the last drop. I had lived my life. Would I had the gift to paint the life I had lived!

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chapter 56
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
6 months 1 day ago
Dreams are the touchstones of our...

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
3 months 3 weeks ago
In argument about moral problems, relativism...

In argument about moral problems, relativism is the first refuge of the scoundrel.

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Some More -isms, p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 4 weeks ago
No one is so modest as...

No one is so modest as not to believe himself a competent amateur sleuth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 months 1 day ago
The perception of the comic is...

The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible.

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The Comic
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
4 months ago
The assertion that art may be...

The assertion that art may be good art and at the same time incomprehensible to a great number of people is extremely unjust, and its consequences are ruinous to art itself...it is the same as saying some kind of food is good but most people can't eat it.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
6 months 3 days ago
Covetousness, and the desire of having...

Covetousness, and the desire of having in our possession, and under our dominion, more than we have need of, being the root of all evil, should be early and carefully weeded out, and the contrary quality of a readiness to impart to others, implanted. This should be encourag'd by great commendation and credit, and constantly taking care that he loses nothing by his liberality.

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Sec. 110
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 3 weeks ago
Sincerity becomes apparent. From being apparent,...

Sincerity becomes apparent. From being apparent, it becomes manifest. From being manifest, it becomes brilliant. Brilliant, it affects others. Affecting others, they are changed by it. Changed by it, they are transformed. It is only he who is possessed of the most complete sincerity that can exist under heaven, who can transform.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
4 months 3 weeks ago
The concept of guilt is found...

The concept of guilt is found most powerfully developed even in the most primitive communal forms which we know: ... the man is guilty who violates one of the original laws which dominate the society and which are mostly derived from a divine founder; the boy who is accepted into the tribal community and learns its laws, which bind him thenceforth, learns to promise; this promise is often given under the sign of death, which is symbolically carried out on the boy, with a symbolical rebirth.

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p. 178
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 1 week ago
Whatever can be done another day...

Whatever can be done another day can be done today.

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Ch. 20. Of the Force of Imagination (tr. Donald M. Frame)
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
6 months 4 weeks ago
I do see one large and...

I do see one large and grievous kind of ignorance, separate from the rest, and as weighty as all the other parts put together. Thinking that one knows a thing when one does not know it. Through this, I believe, all the mistakes of the mind are caused in all of us.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
2 months 1 week ago
If compelled to indicate my religion...

If compelled to indicate my religion on an immigration blank, I might be tempted to put down the word "Taoist," to the amazement of the customs officer who probably never heard of it.

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The Wisdom of Laotse (1948), Introduction, p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
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