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Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 1 week ago
Her face seems ravaged by both...

Her face seems ravaged by both lightning and hail. But on yours there is something like the promise of a storm: one day passion will burn it to the bone.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
3 months 1 week ago
Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional,...

Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.

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p. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 3 weeks ago
He who establishes his argument by...

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 1 week ago
Consider what you have in the...

Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.

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Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
1 month 2 weeks ago
We do not have to love...

We do not have to love one another to be obligated to build a world in which all lives are sustainable. The right to persist can only be understood as a social right, as the subjective instance of a social and global obligation we bear toward one another.

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p. 64
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 4 weeks ago
To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension...

To wisdom belongs the intellectual apprehension of things eternal; to knowledge, the rational apprehension of things temporal.

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As quoted in The Anchor Book of Latin Quotations: with English translations‎ (1990) by Norbert Guterman, p. 375
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks ago
Disciplinary society....
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Jesus
Jesus
2 months 6 days ago
Are ye also yet without understanding?...

Are ye also yet without understanding? Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.

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15:16-20 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Once we have tasted the sweetness...

Once we have tasted the sweetness of what is spiritual, the pleasures of the world will have no attraction for us. If we disregard the shadows of things, then we will penetrate their inner substance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
4 months 3 days ago
This happy state can only be...

This happy state can only be obtained by a prudent care of the body, and a steady government of the mind. The diseases of the body are to be prevented by temperance, or cured by medicine, or rendered tolerable by patience.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 1 week ago
Critics who treat adult as a...

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

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"On Three Ways of Writing for Children" (1952) - in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1967), p. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 1 week ago
Of what I am, I know...

Of what I am, I know no more than that I am, but here no tie is necessary between subject and object. My own being is this tie, I am at once the subject knowing, and the object known of; and this reflection or return of the knowledge on itself is what I designate by the term I, if I have any determinate meaning.

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Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 50
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 3 weeks ago
Delight at having understood a very...

Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.

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J 77
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 2 weeks ago
Hypothetical liberty is allowed to everyone...

Hypothetical liberty is allowed to everyone who is not a prisoner and in chains

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§ 8.23
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 1 week ago
We are told that Christ was...

We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He has disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Any theories we build up as to how Christ's death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary: mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they do not help us, and, if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself.

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Book II, Chapter 4, "The Perfect Penitent"
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 week 2 days ago
The capitalist call workers to the...

The capitalist call workers to the factory, for example, directing them to collaborate and communicate in production and giving them the means to do so. In the paradigm of immaterial production, in contrast, labor itself tends to produce the means of interaction, communication, and cooperation for production directly. Affective labor always directly constructs a relationship.

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147
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 1 week ago
If, as I maintain and firmly...

If, as I maintain and firmly believe, there is no objective definition of intelligence, and what we call intelligence is only a creation of cultural fashion and subjective prejudice, what the devil is it we test when we make use of an intelligence test?

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Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
3 months 1 week ago
A text is not a text...

A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its law and its rules are not, however, harbored in the inaccessibility of a secret; it is simply that they can never be booked, in the present, into anything that could rigorously be called a perception.

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Plato's Pharmacy, intro
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 3 weeks ago
They are splendidly built [Italian Hospitals],...

They are splendidly built [Italian Hospitals], the best food and drink are at hand, the attendants are very diligent, the physicians are learned, the beds and coverings are very clean, and the bedsteads are painted. As soon as a sick man is brought in, all his clothes are taken off in the presence of a notary and are faithfully kept for him. He is then laid in a handsomely painted bed with clean sheets. Two physicians are fetched at once. Attendants come with food and drink, served in immaculate glass vessels; these are not touched with as much as a finger but are brought on a tray.

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3930
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 1 week ago
People do not deserve to have...

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

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1841
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 2 weeks ago
Nature has pointed out a mixed...

Nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most suitable to the human race, and secretly admonished them to allow none of these biases to draw too much, so as to incapacitate them for other occupations and entertainments. Indulge your passion for science, says she, but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy which they introduce, by the endless uncertainty in which they involve you, and by the cold reception which your pretended discoveries shall meet with, when communicated. Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.

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Section 1 : Of The Different Species of Philosophy
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
3 months 1 week ago
The will to the...

The will to the "true world" in the sense of Plato and Christianity ... is in truth a no-saying to our present world, precisely the one in which art is at home.

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p. 74
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 1 week ago
Probably, the most-often-repeated lesson in history...

Probably, the most-often-repeated lesson in history is that foreigners who are called in to help one side in a civil war take over for themselves. It is a lesson that seems never to be learned despite endless repetition.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 3 weeks ago
The human understanding is of its...

The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds. And though there be many things in nature which are singular and unmatched, yet it devises for them parallels and conjugates and relatives which do not exist. Hence the fiction that all celestial bodies move in perfect circles, spirals and dragons being (except in name) utterly rejected.

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Aphorism 45
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
The reasons for persisting in Being...

The reasons for persisting in Being seem less and less well founded, and our successors will find it easier than we to be rid of such obstinacy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 weeks ago
Let me suggest a theme for...

Let me suggest a theme for you: to state to yourself precisely and completely what that walk over the mountains amounted to for you, - returning to this essay again and again, until you are satisfied that all that was important in your experience is in it. Give this good reason to yourself for having gone over the mountains, for mankind is ever going over a mountain. Don't suppose that you can tell it precisely the first dozen times you try, but at 'em again, especially when, after a sufficient pause, you suspect that you are touching the heart or summit of the matter, reiterate your blows there, and account for the mountain to yourself. Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

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Letter to Harrison Blake, November 16, 1857
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 2 weeks ago
Habit... makes the endurance of evil...

Habit... makes the endurance of evil easy (which, under the name of patience, is falsely honored as a virtue), because sensations of the same type, when continued without alteration for a long time, draw our attention away from the senses so that we are scarcely conscious of them at all. On the other hand, habit also makes the consciousness and the remembrance of good that has been received more difficult, which then gradually leads to ingratitude (a real vice). [...] Acquired habit deprives good actions of their moral value because it undermines mental freedom and, moreover, it leads to thoughtless repetitions of the same acts (monotony), and thus becomes ridiculous.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), pages 34-35
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
3 months 4 days ago
The problem is one of opposition...

The problem is one of opposition between subjective and objective points of view. There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality. But often what appears to a more subjective point of view cannot be accounted for in this way. So either the objective conception of the world is incomplete, or the subjective involves illusions that should be rejected.

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"Subjective and Objective" (1979), p. 196.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 3 weeks ago
Arts and sciences are not cast...

Arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are formed and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing, as bears leisurely lick their cubs into form.

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Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
3 months 1 day ago
Socrates thought that if all our...

Socrates thought that if all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence every one must take an equal portion, most persons would be contented to take their own and depart.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 2 weeks ago
Where there is happiness, there is...
Where there is happiness, there is found pleasure in nonsense. The transformation of experience into its opposite, of the suitable into the unsuitable, the obligatory into the optional (but in such a manner that this process produces no injury and is only imagined in jest), is a pleasure; ...
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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 1 week ago
Karsky: I met your father last...

Karsky: I met your father last week. Are you still interested in hearing how he is doing?

Hugo: No. 

Karsky: It is very probable that you will be responsible for his death.

Hugo: It is virtually certain that he is responsible for my life. We are even.

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Act 4, sc. 4
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 6 days ago
Skepticism, like chastity, should not be...

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.

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George Santayana, as quoted in Quotations for Our Time (1977) edited by Laurence J. Peter
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 1 week ago
Never did Christ….

Never did Christ utter a single word attesting to a personal resurrection and a life beyond the grave.

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My Religion (1884), Ch. 8
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 6 days ago
All liberation depends on the consciousness...

All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude, and the emergence of this consciousness is always hampered by the predominance of needs and satisfactions which, to a great extent, have become the individual's own.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 2 weeks ago
I have never in my life...

I have never in my life met a man like him for noble simplicity, and boundless truthfulness. I understood from the way he talked that anyone who chose could deceive him, and that he would forgive anyone afterwards who had deceived him, and that was why I grew to love him.

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Part 4, Chapter 8
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
Probably in time physiologists will be...

Probably in time physiologists will be able to make nerves connecting the bodies of different people; this will have the advantage that we shall be able to feel another man's tooth aching.

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Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), p. 493
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 1 week ago
You could give Aristotle a tutorial....

You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world, you also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 2 weeks ago
I think the devil doesn't exist,...

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 1 week ago
Generals are usually a conservative force...

Generals are usually a conservative force who can be relied on to oppose social change.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 3 weeks ago
A faithful and good servant is...

A faithful and good servant is a real godsend; but truly 'tis a rare bird in the land.

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156
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is clear that thought is...

It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search.

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Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda, books.google.com, archive.org
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
4 days ago
It is our fatalest misery just...

It is our fatalest misery just now, not easily alterable, and yet urgently requiring to be altered, That no British man can attain to be a Statesman, or Chief of Workers, till he has first proved himself a Chief of Talkers: which mode of trial for a Worker, is it not precisely, of all the trials you could set him upon, the falsest and unfairest?

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 1 week ago
Self-trust is the first secret of...

Self-trust is the first secret of success.

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Success
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 2 weeks ago
The unity is brought about by...

The unity is brought about by force.

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Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 70.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 1 week ago
All mankind, right down to those...

All mankind, right down to those you most despise, are your neighbors.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 1 week ago
Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens...

Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
1 month 3 weeks ago
The Orient that appears in Orientalism,...

The Orient that appears in Orientalism, then, is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later, Western empire. ... The Orient is the stage on which the whole East is confined. On this stage will appear the figures whose role it is to represent the larger whole from which they emanate. The Orient then seems to be, not an unlimited extension beyond the familiar European world, but rather a closed field, a theatrical stage affixed to Europe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 1 week ago
Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas...

Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas below, Which always find us young And always keep us so.

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Ode to Beauty, st. 2
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 4 days ago
Nationalism is always an effort in...

Nationalism is always an effort in a direction opposite to that of the principle which creates nations. The former is exclusive in tendency, the latter inclusive. In periods of consolidation, nationalism has a positive value, and is a lofty standard. But in Europe everything is more than consolidated, and nationalism is nothing but a mania, a pretext to escape from the necessity of inventing something new, some great enterprise.

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Chapter XIV: Who Rules The World?
Philosophical Maxims
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