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John Gray
John Gray
3 weeks 4 days ago
With new technologies of surveillance, economies...

With new technologies of surveillance, economies of scale overcome problems of cost. Since all their electronic communications can be accessed, it is no longer necessary to segregate the inmates from one another. As there is no outside world, escape becomes unimaginable. Technological progress has brought into being a system of surveillance more far-reaching than any Bentham could have conceived. Enclosing the entire population in a virtual Panopticon might seem the ultimate invasion of freedom. But universal confinement need not be experienced as a privation. If they know nothing else, most are likely to accept it as normal. If the technology through which surveillance operates also provides continuous entertainment, they may soon find any other way of living intolerable.

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In the Puppet Theatre: A Universal Panopticon (p. 125)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
Love is better than hate, because...

Love is better than hate, because it brings harmony instead of conflict into the desires of the persons concerned. Two people between whom there is love succeed or fail together, but when two people hate each other the success of either is the failure of the other.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 1 week ago
To rank the effort above the...

To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
Music is the poor man's Parnassus....

Music is the poor man's Parnassus.

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Poetry and Imagination
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 2 weeks ago
To hold a pen…

To hold a pen is to be at war.

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Letter to Jeanne-Grâce Bosc du Bouchet, comtesse d'Argental (4 October 1748)
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
2 months 1 week ago
I do not accept any absolute...

I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man's life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.

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As quoted in Martin Buber : An Intimate Portrait (1971), p. 56
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
Chaos is rejecting all you have...

Chaos is rejecting all you have learned. Chaos is being yourself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 3 days ago
Little is needed to ruin and...

Little is needed to ruin and upset everything, only a slight aberration from reason.

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Book IV, ch. 3, 4.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 weeks ago
People are entirely too disbelieving of...

People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 3 weeks ago
But such is the nature of...

But such is the nature of the human mind, that it always lays hold on every mind that approaches it; and as it is wonderfully fortified by an unanimity of sentiments, so is it shocked and disturbed by any contrariety. Hence the eagerness, which most people discover in a dispute; and hence their impatience of opposition, even in the most speculative and indifferent opinions.

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Part I, Essay 8: Of Parties in General
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
Only what we have not accomplished...

Only what we have not accomplished and what we could not accomplish matters to us, so that what remains of a whole life is only what it will not have been.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
Mysticism is just tomorrow's science dreamed...

Mysticism is just tomorrow's science dreamed today.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 4 days ago
He who created you without you...

He who created you without you will not justify you without you.

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169
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 2 weeks ago
Money is always to be found….

Money is always to be found when men are to be sent to the frontiers to be destroyed: when the object is to preserve them, it is no longer so.

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"Charity", 1770
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
1 week 6 days ago
The idea of universal human dignity...

The idea of universal human dignity ultimately comes out of Christianity... the view that all human beings are equal in the sight of God because they have the capacity for moral choice. As Western thought developed in the 17th-18th centuries, this took on a secular form under thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Immanuel Kant or Georg Hegel, who argued that human equality is... based on human autonomy.

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11:12
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
All media work us over completely....

All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty - psychic or physical.

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(p. 26)
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 2 weeks ago
We are asleep. Our Life is...

We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.

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Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
3 months 1 week ago
I am a utilitarian. I am...

I am a utilitarian. I am also a vegetarian. I am a vegetarian because I am a utilitarian.

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Utilitarianism and Vegetarianism, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 9(4): 325 (1980).
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 3 weeks ago
The principle of equality does not...

The principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.

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Book Three, Chapter XI.
Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
2 months 4 days ago
Myth is depoliticized speech. p. 145

Myth is depoliticized speech.

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p. 145
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 days ago
We must admit, however, that neither...

We must admit, however, that neither wild beasts nor any other creature except man is subject to anger: for, whilst anger is the foe of reason, it nevertheless does not arise in any place where reason cannot dwell. Wild beasts have impulses, fury, cruelty, combativeness: they have not anger any more than they have luxury: yet they indulge in some pleasures with less self-control than human beings.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 weeks ago
The wisest man preaches no doctrines;...

The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky. If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 1 week ago
As for me…

As for me, when you want a good laugh, you will find me in fine state... fat and sleek, a true hog of Epicurus' herd.

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Book I, epistle iv, lines 15-16
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 1 week ago
This is the ideal world –...

This is the ideal world, a perfect world of equality, fraternity, harmony, welfare, and justice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Antisthenes
Antisthenes
3 months 1 week ago
It's a royal privilege…

It is a royal privilege to do good and be ill spoken of.

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§ 3; quoted also by Marcus Aurelius, vii. 36
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 2 weeks ago
A new word is like a...

A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 weeks ago
Hypocrisy is a universal phenomenon. It...

Hypocrisy is a universal phenomenon. It ends with death, but not before.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 2 weeks ago
Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic....

Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic. Both alike are concerned with such things as come, more or less, within the general ken of all men and belong to no definite science. Accordingly, all men make use, more or less, of both; for to a certain extent all men attempt to discuss statements and to maintain them, to defend themselves and to attack others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Anyone who actually admires money as...

Anyone who actually admires money as the most precious thing in life, and rests his security on it to the extent of believing that as long as he possesses it he will be happy, has fashioned too many false gods for himself. Too many people put money in the place of Christ, as if it alone has the key to their happiness or unhappiness.

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p. 100
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
Never self-possessed, or prudent, love is...

Never self-possessed, or prudent, love is all abandonment.

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p. 158
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
2 months 2 weeks ago
The true philosophical Act is annihilation...

The true philosophical Act is annihilation of self (Selbsttodtung); this is the real beginning of all Philosophy; all requisites for being a Disciple of Philosophy point hither. This Act alone corresponds to all the conditions and characteristics of transcendental conduct.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 2 weeks ago
Human beings have faculties more elevated...

Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification. I do not, indeed, consider the Epicureans to have been by any means faultless in drawing out their scheme of consequences from the utilitarian principle. To do this in any sufficient manner, many Stoic, as well as Christian elements require to be included. But there is no known Epicurean theory of life which does not assign to the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 1 week ago
This dysfunction of power was related...

This dysfunction of power was related to a central excess: what might be called the monarchical 'super-power', which identified the right to punish with the personal power of the sovereign.

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Chapter Two, pp.80
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 week ago
All movements go...
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Main Content / General
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 3 weeks ago
Once conform, once do what others...

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Wherever a man is, there will...

Wherever a man is, there will be a lie.

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Episodes in the Story of a Mine.
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 month 1 week ago
In all the areas of life...

In all the areas of life where people have sought and found consolation through forbidding their desires-sex in particular, and taste in general-the habit of judgment is now to be stamped out.

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"Rays of Hope" (p. 106)
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
2 months 2 weeks ago
They say in the grave there...

They say in the grave there is peace, and peace and the grave are one and the same.

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Act I.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
3 months 2 weeks ago
The good is the idea, or...

The good is the idea, or unity of the conception of the will with the particular will. Abstract right, well-being, the subjectivity of consciousness, and the contingency of external reality, are in their independent and separate existences superseded in this unity, although in their real essence they are contained in it and preserved. This unity is realized freedom, the absolute final cause of the world. Addition.-Every stage is properly the idea, but the earlier steps contain the idea only in more abstract form. The I, as person, is already the idea, although in its most abstract guise. The good is the idea more completely determined; it is the unity of the conception of will with the particular will. It is not something abstractly right, but has a real content, whose substance constitutes both right and well-being.

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Philosophy of Right translated by SW Dyde Queen's University Canada 1896 p. 123
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 3 weeks ago
Superstition is more injurious to God...

Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
1 week 5 days ago
Whence do you have it that...

Whence do you have it that the terrestrial globe is so heavy? For my part, either I do not know what heaviness is, or the terrestrial globe is neither heavy nor light, as likewise all other globes of the universe. Heaviness to me (and I believe to Nature) is that innate tendency by which a body resists being moved from its natural place and by which, when forcibly removed therefrom, it spontaneously returns there. Thus a bucketful of water raised on high and set free, returns to the sea; but who will say that the same water remains heavy in the sea, when being set free there, does not move?

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Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
2 months 2 weeks ago
I suddenly stopped and looked out...

I suddenly stopped and looked out at the sea and thought, my God, how beautiful this is ... for 26 years I had never really looked at it before.

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On his greater appreciation of the scenery of the world, after his near-death experience, as quoted in "Did atheist philosopher see God when he 'died'?" by William Cash, in National Post (3 March 2001).
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 3 weeks ago
If nature has been frugal in...

If nature has been frugal in her gifts and endowments, there is the more need of art to supply her defects. If she has been generous and liberal, know that she still expects industry and application on our part, and revenges herself in proportion to our negligent ingratitude. The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds; and instead of vines and olives for the pleasure and use of man, produces, to its slothful owner, the most abundant crop of poisons.

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Part I, Essay 16: The Stoic
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
All our problems are caused by...

All our problems are caused by forgetting what lives within us, and we sell our souls for the "bowl of stew" of bodily satisfactions.

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p. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 months 4 days ago
When I made my theoretical model,...

When I made my theoretical model, I could not have guessed that people would try to realise it with Molotov cocktails.

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As quoted in The Dialectical Imagination : A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research (1973) by M Jay, p. 279.
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
2 months 3 weeks ago
Since I have spread my wings...

Since I have spread my wings to purpose high, The more beneath my feet the clouds I see, The more I give the winds my pinions free, Spurning the earth and soaring to the sky.

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As quoted in "Giordano Bruno" by Thomas Davidson, in The Index Vol. VI. No. 36 (4 March 1886), p. 429
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
3 months 2 weeks ago
Not only must philosophy be in...

Not only must philosophy be in agreement with our empirical knowledge of Nature, but the origin and formation of the Philosophy of Nature presupposes and is conditioned by empirical physics. However, the course of a science's origin and the preliminaries of its construction are one thing, while the science itself is another. In the latter, the former can no longer appear as the foundation of the science; here, the foundation must be the necessity of the Concept.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Times are changed with him who...

Times are changed with him who marries; there are no more by-path meadows, where you may innocently linger, but the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave. Idleness, which is often becoming and even wise in the bachelor, begins to wear a different aspect when you have a wife to support.

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Virginibus Puerisque, Ch. 2.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
Mass man is a phenomenon of...

Mass man is a phenomenon of electric speed, not of physical quantity.

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Access, Issues 165-176, National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting, 1984, p. xxiii
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 2 days ago
All old Poems, Homer's and the...

All old Poems, Homer's and the rest, are authentically Songs. I would say, in strictness, that all right Poems are; that whatsoever is not sung is properly no Poem, but a piece of Prose cramped into jingling lines,-to the great injury of the grammar, to the great grief of the reader, for most part! What we wants to get at is the thought the man had, if he had any: why should he twist it into jingle, if he could speak it out plainly? It is only when the heart of him is rapt into true passion of melody, and the very tones of him, according to Coleridge's remark, become musical by the greatness, depth and music of his thoughts, that we can give him right to rhyme and sing; that we call him a Poet, and listen to him as the Heroic of Speakers,-whose speech is Song.

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Philosophical Maxims
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