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Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 2 weeks ago
The proposal of any new law...

The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

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Chapter XI, Part III, Conclusion of the Chapter, p. 292.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
4 months 5 days ago
Man, if he is to remain...

Man, if he is to remain man, must advance by way of consciousness. There is no road leading backward. ... We can no longer veil reality from ourselves by renouncing self-consciousness without simultaneously excluding ourselves from the historical course of human existence.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 2 weeks ago
Moreover, if the character is formed,...

Moreover, if the character is formed, and the mind made up, on the few cardinal points of human opinion, agreement of conviction and feeling on these, has been felt in all times to be an essential requisite of anything worthy the name of friendship, in a really earnest mind. All these circumstances united, made the number very small of those whose society, and still more whose intimacy, I now voluntarily sought.

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(p. 229)
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 3 weeks ago
But men must know that in...

But men must know that in this theater of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

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Book II, xx, 8
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 1 week ago
If you die, I will lie...

If you die, I will lie down beside you and I will stay there until the end, without eating or drinking, you will rot in my arms and I will love you as carcass: for you love nothing if you do not love everything.

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Act 10, sc. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 3 weeks ago
In conclusion, I wish to say...

In conclusion, I wish to say that my attitude to the whole tragic question is not dictated by my Jewish antecedents. It is motivated by my abhorrence of injustice, and man's inhumanity to man. It is because of this that I have fought all my life for anarchism which alone will do away with the horrors of the capitalist régime and place all races and peoples, including the Jews, on a free and equal basis. Until then I consider it highly inconsistent for socialists and anarchists to discriminate in any shape or form against the Jews.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 week ago
Privacy invasion is now one of...

Privacy invasion is now one of biggest knowledge industries.

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(p. 24)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 3 weeks ago
Even opinion is of force enough...

Even opinion is of force enough to make itself to be espoused at the expense of life.

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Book I, Ch. 40. Of Good and Evil, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842
Philosophical Maxims
Zeno of Citium
Zeno of Citium
4 months 3 weeks ago
No one entrusts a secret to...

No one entrusts a secret to a drunken man; but one will entrust a secret to a good man; therefore, the good man will not get drunk.

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As quoted in Epistulae morales ad Lucilium by Seneca, Epistle LXXXIII (trans. R. M. Gummere)
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 2 weeks ago
It is natural for us to...

It is natural for us to seek a Standard of Taste; a rule, by which the various sentiments of men may be reconciled; at least, a decision, afforded, confirming one sentiment, and condemning another.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
3 months 3 weeks ago
To sum up: we have seen...

To sum up: we have seen that of the three notions of 'partial interpretation' discussed, each is either unsuitable for Carnap's purposes (starting with observation terms), or incompatible with a rather minimal scientific realism; and, in addition, the second notion depends upon gross and misleading changes in our use of language. Thus in none of these senses is 'a partially interpreted calculus in which only the observation terms are directly interpreted' an acceptable model for a scientific theory.

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"What theories are not"
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 1 week ago
To whomever gives a kiss…

To whomever gives a kiss or a blowRender a kiss or blow, but to whomever gives when you are unable to return, offer all the hatred in your hear, for you were slaves and he enslaves you.

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Acts 8 & 9
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
3 months 2 weeks ago
One can imagine a computer simulation...

One can imagine a computer simulation of the action of peptides in the hypothalamus that is accurate down to the last synapse. But equally one can imagine a computer simulation of the oxidation of hydrocarbons in a car engine or the action of digestive processes in a stomach when it is digesting pizza. And the simulation is no more the real thing in the case of the brain than it is in the case of the car or the stomach. Barring miracles, you could not run your car by doing a computer simulation of the oxidation of gasoline, and you could not digest pizza by running the program that simulates such digestion. It seems obvious that a simulation of cognition will similarly not produce the effects of the neurobiology of cognition.

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"Is the Brain's Mind a Computer Program?", Scientific American (January 1990).
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 1 week ago
Civilizations have always been pyramidal in...

Civilizations have always been pyramidal in structure. As one climbs toward the apex of the social edifice, there is increased leisure and increasing opportunity to pursue happiness. As one climbs, one finds also fewer and fewer people to enjoy this more and more. Invariably, there is a preponderance of the dispossessed. And remember this, no matter how well off the bottom layers of the pyramid might be on an absolute scale, they are always dispossessed in comparison with the apex.So there is always social friction in ordinary human societies. The action of social revolution and the reaction of guarding against such revolution or combating it once it has begun are the causes of a great deal of the human misery with which history is permeated.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 1 day ago
It is sad not to be...

It is sad not to be loved, but it is much sadder not to be able to love.

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To a Young Writer
Philosophical Maxims
Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach
4 months 1 week ago
Nature consists of the elements given...

Nature consists of the elements given by the senses. Primitive man first takes out of them certain complexes of these elements that present themselves with a certain stability and are most important to him. The first and oldest words are names for "things". ... The sensations are no "symbols of things". On the contrary the "thing" is a mental symbol for a sensation-complex of relative stability. Not the things, the bodies, but colours, sounds, pressures, times (what we usually call sensations) are the true elements of the world.

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p. 23, as quoted in Lenin as Philosopher: A Critical Examination of the Philosophical Basis of Leninism (1948) by Anton Pannekoek, p. 454
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 1 week ago
'But why,' (some ask), 'why, if...

But why,' (some ask), 'why, if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own?' Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality. One can see the principle at work in his characterization. Much that in a realistic work would be done by 'character delineation' is here done simply by making the character an elf, a dwarf, or a hobbit. The imagined beings have their insides on the outside; they are visible souls. And Man as a whole, Man pitted against the universe, have we seen him at all till we see that he is like a hero in a fairy tale?

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p. 89
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
5 months 2 weeks ago
Let us maintain inviolably equality in...

Let us maintain inviolably equality in the sacred right of suffrage: public security can never have a basis more solid.

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Author's Inscription: French Edition
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
Go where he will, the wise...

Go where he will, the wise man is at home, His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome.

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Wood-notes, st. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 5 days ago
To a shower of gold most...

To a shower of gold most things are penetrable.

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Pt. I, Bk. III, ch. 7.
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
2 months 4 days ago
British rule in India is the...

British rule in India is the most sordid and criminal exploitation of one nation by another in all recorded history. I propose to show that England has year by year been bleeding India to the point of death, and that self-government of India by the Hindus could not within any reasonable probability, have worse results than the present form of alien domination.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
5 months 1 week ago
To each according to his threat...

To each according to his threat advantage does not count as a principle of justice.

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Chapter III, Section 24, pg. 141
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 3 weeks ago
Like a plague, the mad spirit...

Like a plague, the mad spirit is sweeping the country, infesting the clearest heads and staunchest hearts with the deathly germ of militarism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
1 month 1 week ago
But here is the "ego" of...

But here is the "ego" of the Russian revolutionary again! Pirouetting on its head, it once more proclaims itself to be the all-powerful director of history - this time with the title of His Excellency the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Party of Russia.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
I've got a one-dimensional mind. Said...

I've got a one-dimensional mind.

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Said to Rupert Crawshay-Williams; Russell Remembered (1970), p. 31
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
1 month 2 weeks ago
National defense through war always involves...

National defense through war always involves some degree of national defeat. This paradox has been with us from the very beginning of our republic. Militarization in defense of freedom reduces the freedom of the defenders. There is a fundamental inconsistency between war and freedom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel
1 month 3 weeks ago
Cities are, first of all, seats...

Cities are, first of all, seats of the highest economic division of labor. They produce thereby such extreme phenomena as in Paris the remunerative occupation of the quatorzième. They are persons who identify themselves by signs on their residences and who are ready at the dinner hour in correct attire, so that they can be quickly called upon if a dinner party should consist of thirteen persons. In the measure of its expansion, the city offers more and more the decisive conditions of the division of labor. It offers a circle which through its size can absorb a highly diverse variety of services.

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p. 420
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 month 4 days ago
We are inclined to overemphasize...

We are inclined to overemphasize the material influences in history. The Russians especially make this mistake. Intellectual values and ethnic influences, tradition and emotional factors are equally important. If this were not the case, Europe would today be a federated state, not a madhouse of nationalism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
2 months 1 week ago
Now the argument that I make...

Now the argument that I make in my book is that part of the current disaffection with liberalism is not from any of its basic principles, but... is the result of certain deformations of liberal principles that were carried to extremes that led... to bad outcomes... There's a move in this direction on the right and... on the left.

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12:25 Ref: Francis Fukuyama, Liberalism and Its Discontents
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
4 months 5 days ago
The quality of the human that...

The quality of the human that precludes identifying the individual with the class is 'metaphysical' and has no place in empiricist epistemology. The pigeon hole into which a man is shoved circumscribes his fate.

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p. 23.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 1 week ago
Why don't I commit suicide? Because...

Why don't I commit suicide? Because I am as sick of death as I am of life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
It seems clear to me that...

It seems clear to me that marriage ought to be constituted by children, and relations not involving children ought to be ignored by the law and treated as indifferent by public opinion. It is only through children that relations cease to be a purely private matter.

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Letter to Ottoline Morrell, January 30, 1916
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
3 months 2 weeks ago
One might expect that a consideration...

One might expect that a consideration of grievability pertains only to those who are dead, but my contention is that grievability is already operative in life, and that it is a characteristic attributed to living creatures, marking their value within a differential scheme of values and bearing directly on the question of whether or not they are treated equally and in a just way. To be grievable is to be interpellated in such a way that you know your life matters; that the loss of your life would matter; that your body is treated as one that should be able to live and thrive, whose precarity should be minimized, for which provisions for flourishing should be available. The presumption of equal grievability would be not only a conviction or attitude with which another person greets you, but a principle that organizes the social organization of health, food, shelter, employment, sexual life, and civic life.

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p. 59
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 1 week ago
It is not the same thing....

It is not the same thing. You are perhaps not lying, but you are not telling the truth.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 5 days ago
Originality is a thing we constantly...

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with; as if, observes our author himself, any originality but our own could be expected to content us! In fact all strange thing are apt, without fault of theirs, to estrange us at first view, and unhappily scarcely anything is perfectly plain, but what is also perfectly common.

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Richter.
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
5 months 2 weeks ago
It is very important to note...

It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry...But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins' science not been long established in Europe...

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Voltaire, Fragments historiques sur l'Inde. Quoted in Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
4 months 1 week ago
The open society...

The open society is one that is deemed in principle to embrace all humanity.

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Chapter IV
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 month 4 days ago
Life is like riding a...

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
5 months 4 weeks ago
Therefore death is nothing…

Therefore death is nothing to us, it matters not one jot, since the nature of the mind is understood to be mortal.

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Book III, lines 830-831 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
4 months 1 week ago
It is important to understand what...

It is important to understand what I mean by semiosis. All dynamic action, or action of brute force, physical or psychical, either takes place between two subjects, - whether they react equally upon each other, or one is agent and the other patient, entirely or partially, - or at any rate is a resultant of such actions between pairs. But by "semiosis" I mean, on the contrary, an action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs.

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"Pragmatism" (1907) in The Essential Peirce : Selected Philosophical Writings (1998) edited by the Peirce Edition Project, Vol. 2, p. 411, Indiana University Press.
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months 2 weeks ago
I do not say this, that...

I do not say this, that I think there should be no difference of opinions in conversation, nor opposition in men's discourses... 'Tis not the owning one's dissent from another, that I speak against, but the manner of doing it.

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Sec. 145
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 month 3 weeks ago
Religion is always falling apart. Buddhism,...

Religion is always falling apart. Buddhism, the Religion of No-Religion.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 3 weeks ago
The death of dogma....
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Main Content / General
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
4 months 2 weeks ago
Thus then does the Doctrine of...

Thus then does the Doctrine of Knowledge, which in its substance is the realisation of the absolute Power of intelligising which has now been defined, end with the recognition of itself as a mere Schema in a Doctrine of Wisdom, although indeed a necessary and indispensable means to such a Doctrine: - a Schema, the sole aim of which is, with the knowledge thus acquired, - by which knowledge alone a Will, clear and intelligible to itself and reposing upon itself without wavering or perplexity, is possible, - to return wholly into Actual Life; - not into the Life of blind and irrational Instinct which we have laid bare in all its nothingness, but into the Divine Life which shall become visible to us.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 1 week ago
Human life. Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable....

Human life. Duration: momentary. Nature: changeable. Perception: dim. Condition of Body: decaying. Soul: spinning around. Fortune: unpredictable. Lasting Fame: uncertain. Sum Up: The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home, lasting reputation is oblivion.

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(Hays translation) II, 17
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
2 months 4 days ago
It is life that educates, and...

It is life that educates, and perhaps love more than anything else in life.

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Ch. 2 : On Youth
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 week ago
People in new environments always produce...

People in new environments always produce the new preceptual modality without any difficulty or awareness of change. It is later that the psychic and social realignments baffle societies.

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ARTnews annual, Volume 31, Art Foundation, 1966, p. 56
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 month 2 weeks ago
The assumption of a Final Cause...

The assumption of a Final Cause in the structure of each part of animals and plants is as inevitable as the assumption of an Efficient Cause for every event. The maxim that in organized bodies nothing is 'in vain', is as necessarily true as the maxim that nothing happens 'by chance'.

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Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
1 month 4 weeks ago
He was a one-book man. Some...

He was a one-book man. Some men have only one book in them; others, a library.

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Vol. I, ch. 11, p. 402
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
3 months 2 weeks ago
Whatever it may be, animals have...

Whatever it may be, animals have always had, until our era, a divine or sacrificial nobility that all mythologies recount. Even murder by hunting is still a symbolic relation, as opposed to an experimental dissection. Even domestication is still a symbolic relation, as opposed to industrial breeding. One only has to look at the status of animals in peasant society. And the status of domestication, which presupposes land, a clan, a system of parentage of which the animals are a part, must not be confused with the status of the domestic pet-the only type of animals that are left to us outside reserves and breeding stations-dogs, cats, birds, hamsters, all packed together in the affection of their master. The trajectory animals have followed, from divine sacrifice to dog cemeteries with atmospheric music, from sacred defiance to ecological sentimentality, speaks loudly enough of the vulgarization of the status of man himself.

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"The Animals: Territory and Metamorphoses," p. 134
Philosophical Maxims
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