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Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 3 weeks ago
The haste of day rules over...

The haste of day rules over the night as empty form.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 1 week ago
When I happen to be busy,...

When I happen to be busy, I never give a moment's thought to the "meaning" of anything, particularly of whatever it is I am doing. A proof that the secret of everything is in action and not abstention, that fatal cause of consciousness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
3 months 3 weeks ago
The existential split in man would...

The existential split in man would be unbearable could he not establish a sense of unity within himself and with the natural and human world outside.

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p. 262
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
1 month 3 weeks ago
Love for distance and order, the...

Love for distance and order, the ability to subordinate one's individualistic and passionate element to principles, the ability to take action and work above mere personhood, a feeling of dignity devoid of vanity are features of the true warrior spirit as essential as those which refer to actual combat.

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pp. 114-115
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 week ago
The media have substituted themselves for...

The media have substituted themselves for the older world. "Education, Language, and Media". Cycle 7, 1973, p. 232

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Philosophical Maxims
Étienne de La Boétie
Étienne de La Boétie
2 months 1 week ago
Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel...

Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: and then everybody would shamelessly cry, "Long live the King!" The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them.

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Part 2
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 3 weeks ago
A precise language awaits a completed...

A precise language awaits a completed metaphysics.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 1 week ago
I know that my birth is...

I know that my birth is fortuitous, a laughable accident, and yet, as soon as I forget myself, I behave as if it were a capital event, indispensable to the progress and equilibrium of the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 2 days ago
When a man at forty...

When a man at forty is the object of dislike, he will always continue what he is.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 1 week ago
You may break your heart, but...

You may break your heart, but men will still go on as before.

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VIII, 4
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 3 weeks ago
... our descendants may recognize that...

... our descendants may recognize that we are the sociopathic emotional primitives in the grip of an affective psychosis. Jealousy, envy, resentment, ridicule, hate, anger, disgust, spite, contempt, schadenfreude and a whole gamut of nameless but mean-spirited states we undergo each day are a toxic legacy of our Darwinian past. More commonly, perhaps, our genetic make-up ensures we simply feel indifference to the plight of all but a handful of significant others in our lives. Right now, for instance, one knows dimly at some level that there is frightful and preventable suffering in the world. Yet most of us feel no overpowering moral urgency to do anything about it.

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"Utopian Pharmacology: Mental Health in the Third Millennium MDMA and Beyond", BLTC Research, last updated 2020
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 1 day ago
Illusion begets and sustains the world.....
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Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
3 months 1 week ago
Better to be ignorant of a...

Better to be ignorant of a matter than half know it.

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Maxim 865
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 1 week ago
There are some simple maxims....

There are some simple maxims which I think might be commanded to writers of expository prose. First: never use a long word if a short word will do. Second: if you want to make a statement with a great many qualifications, put some of the qualifications in separate sentences. Third: do not let the beginning of your sentence lead the reader to an expectation which is contradicted by the end.

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"How I Write", The Writer, September 1954
Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
4 months 4 days ago
I am normally said to be...

I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others. If I am prevented by others from doing what I could otherwise do, I am to that degree unfree; and if this area is contracted by other men beyond a certain minimum, I can be described as being coerced, or, it may be, enslaved. Coercion is not, however, a term that covers every form of inability. If I say that I am unable to jump more than ten feet in the air, or cannot read because I am blind, or cannot understand the darker pages of Hegel, it would be eccentric to say that I am to that degree enslaved or coerced. Coercion implies the deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I could otherwise act.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 3 weeks ago
A young delicate tree, that is...

A young delicate tree, that is being clipped and cut by the gardener in order to give it an artificial form, will never reach the majestic height and the beauty as when allowed to grow in nature and freedom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
3 months 1 week ago
Youth now flees on feathered foot....

Youth now flees on feathered foot.

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To Will H. Low, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 3 weeks ago
All vices sink into our whole...

All vices sink into our whole being, if we do not crush them before they gain a footing; and in like manner these sad, pitiable, and discordant feelings end by feeding upon their own bitterness, until the unhappy mind takes a sort of morbid delight in grief... In like manner, wounds heal easily when the blood is fresh upon them: they can then be cleared out and brought to the surface, and admit of being probed by the finger: when disease has turned them into malignant ulcers, their cure is more difficult.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 1 week ago
It's funny the respectable names you...

It's funny the respectable names you can give to superstition.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 1 week ago
This was her finest role and...

This was her finest role and the hardest one to play. Choosing between heaven and a ridiculous fidelity, preferring oneself to eternity or losing oneself in God is the age-old tragedy in which each must play his part.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 3 weeks ago
Normally man's mind is composed only...

Normally man's mind is composed only of a consciousness of his immediate needs, which is to say that this consciousness at any moment can be defined as ''his awareness of his own power to satisfy those needs.'' He thinks in terms of what he intends to do in half an hour's time, a day's time, a month's time an no more. He never asks himself: what are the ''limits'' of my powers? In a sense, he is like a man who has a fortune is the bank, who never asks himself, How much money have I got, but only, Have I enough for a pound of cheese, a new tie, etc.

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Chapter Six, The Question of Identity
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 1 week ago
Is there anything we cannot contrive...

Is there anything we cannot contrive to call the demands of the times, and is there anything that does not acquire a certain prestige by being the demand of the times? But for decisive religious categories to become the demand for the times is eo ipso a contradiction. “The times” is too abstract a category to be able as claimant to demand the decisive religious categories that belong specifically to individuality and particularity; loud collective demands en mass for what can be shared only by the single individual in particularity, in solitariness, in silence, cannot be made.

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Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review.
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 2 weeks ago
For a work to become immortal...

For a work to become immortal it must possess so many excellences that it will not be easy to find a man who understands and values them all; so that there will be in all ages men who recognise and appreciate some of these excellences; by this means the credit of the work will be retained throughout the long course of centuries and ever-changing interests, for, as it is appreciated first in this sense, then in that, the interest is never exhausted.

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Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
1 month 1 week ago
The Leninist agrarian reform has created...

The Leninist agrarian reform has created a new and powerful layer of popular enemies of socialism on the countryside, enemies whose resistance will be much more dangerous and stubborn than that of the noble large landowners.

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Chapter Two
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 week ago
The young are really the heirs...

The young are really the heirs to a generation of incompetence.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 1 week ago
Their worship was not paid to...

Their worship was not paid to the demon which such a being as they imagined would really be, but to their own idea of excellence. The evil is, that such a belief keeps the ideal wretchedly low; and opposes the most obstinate resistance to all thought which has a tendency to raise it higher. Believers shrink from every train of ideas which would lead the mind to a clear conception and an elevated standard of excellence, because they feel (even when they do not distinctly see) that such a standard would conflict with many of the dispensations of nature, and with much of what they are accustomed to consider as the Christian creed.

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(p. 42)
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 1 week ago
There are many kinds of gods....

There are many kinds of gods. Therefore there are many kinds of men.

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"One and Many," p. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
6 months ago
Natural inclinations are present in things...

Natural inclinations are present in things from God, who moves all things. So it is impossible for the natural inclinations of a species to be toward evil in itself. But there is in all perfect animals a natural inclination toward carnal union. Therefore it is impossible for carnal union to be evil in itself.

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III, 126, 3
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 3 weeks ago
Time is the soul of this...

Time is the soul of this world.

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As quoted in Wisdom (2002) by Desmond MacHale
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
5 months 3 weeks ago
Nothing is ever gotten….

Nothing is ever gotten out of nothing by divine power.

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Book I, line 150 (tr. Munro)
Philosophical Maxims
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
4 months 3 days ago
Socrates reminds us that it is...

Socrates reminds us that it is not the same thing, but almost the opposite, to understand religion and to accept it.

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p. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 4 weeks ago
Science seems to me to teach...

Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 3 weeks ago
Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not...

Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not knowing too much; Milton, I think, knew too much finally for the good of his poetry.

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Ch. 43, November 11, 1947.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 1 week ago
Political Economy regards the proletarian ......

Political Economy regards the proletarian ... like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being. It leaves this to criminal law, doctors, religion, statistical tables, politics, and the beadle. ... (1) What is the meaning, in the development of mankind, of this reduction of the greater part of mankind to abstract labor? (2) What mistakes are made by the piecemeal reformers, who either want to raise wages and thereby improve the situation of the working class, or - like Proudhon - see equality of wages as the goal of social revolution?.

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First Manuscript - Wages of Labour, p. 6.
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 month 1 week ago
A 'Natural System' is one which...

A 'Natural System' is one which attempts to make 'all' the divisions natural, the widest as well as the narrowest; and therefore applies 'no' characters 'peremptorily'.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
4 months 1 week ago
By means of the new education...

By means of the new education we want to mould the Germans into a corporate body, which shall be stimulated and animated in all its individual members by the same interest.

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Introduction p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
3 months 3 weeks ago
A major task in organizing is...

A major task in organizing is to determine, first, where the knowledge is located that can provide the various kinds of factual premises that decisions require.

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p. 24.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 month 2 days ago
The moral decline we are...

The moral decline we are compelled to witness and the suffering it engenders are so oppressive that one cannot ignore them even for a moment. No matter how deeply one immerses oneself in work, a haunting feeling of inescapable tragedy persists. Still, there are moments when one feels free from one's own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments, one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable: life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only being.

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Letter to Queen Mother Elisabeth of Belgium (9 January 1939), asking for her help in getting an elderly cousin of his out of Germany and into Belgium. Quoted in Einstein on Peace edited by Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden (1960), p. 282
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 month 2 days ago
Science is international but its...

Science is international but its success is based on institutions, which are owned by nations. If therefore, we wish to promote culture we have to combine and to organize institutions with our own power and means.

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When asked the question, "Why a 'Jewish' University?" when Einstein was assisting Chaim Weizmann in fundraising for The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. | As quoted in [Albert Einstein, Letter "Einstein in Singapore." Manchester Guardian, October 12, 1929]
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 3 weeks ago
If it were true what in...

If it were true what in the end would be gained? Nothing but another truth. Is this such a mighty advantage? We have enough old truths still to digest, and even these we would be quite unable to endure if we did not sometimes flavor them with lies.

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E 10
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 months 2 weeks ago
In ancient Europe, Stoics asserted that...

In ancient Europe, Stoics asserted that a slave could be freer than a master who suffers from self-division. In China, Daoists imagined a type of sage who responded to the flow of events without weighing alternatives. Disciples of monotheistic faiths have believed something similar: freedom, they say, is obeying God's will. What those who follow these traditions want most is not any kind of freedom of choice. Instead, what they long for is freedom from choice.

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The Faith of Puppets: The Freedom of the Marionette (p. 6-7)
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
4 months 1 week ago
Instinct is blind;-a consciousness without insight....

Instinct is blind;-a consciousness without insight. Freedom, as the opposite of Instinct, is thus seeing, and clearly conscious of the grounds of its activity.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 1 week ago
Korell is that frequent phenomenon in...

Korell is that frequent phenomenon in history: the republic whose ruler has every attribute of the absolute monarch but the name. It therefore enjoyed the usual despotism unrestrained even by those two moderating influences in the legitimate monarchies: regal, honor and court etiquette.

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Philosophical Maxims
Polybius
Polybius
2 months 4 days ago
We can get some idea of...

We can get some idea of a whole from a part, but never knowledge or exact opinion. Special histories therefore contribute very little to the knowledge of the whole and conviction of its truth. It is only indeed by study of the interconnexion of all the particulars, their resemblances and differences, that we are enabled at least to make a general survey, and thus derive both benefit and pleasure from history.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 1 week ago
We have, in fact, two kinds...

We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practise, and another which we practise but seldom preach.

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Ch. 8: Eastern and Western Ideals of Happiness
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 5 days ago
Verily I say unto you, I...

Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

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8:10-12 (KJV) Said about the officer.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 months 1 week ago
In spite the mountains of books...

In spite the mountains of books written about art, no precise definition of art has been constructed. And the reason for this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
5 months 1 week ago
We think of beauty as being...

We think of beauty as being most worthy of reverence. But what is most worthy of reverence lights up only where the magnificent strength to revere is alive. To revere is not a thing for the petty and lowly, the incapacitated and underdeveloped. It is a matter of tremendous passion; only what flows from such passion is in the grand style.

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p. 125
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
2 months 6 days ago
It is the simple…

It is the simple hypotheses of which one must be most wary; because these are the ones that have the most chances of passing unnoticed.

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Thermodynamique: Leçons professées pendant le premier semestre 1888-1889 (1892), Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 1 week ago
He was one of those who...

He was one of those who wished for the abolition of the Slave Trade. He thought it ought to be abolished on principles of humanity and justice.

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Speech in the House of Commons (9 May 1788), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVII (1816), column 502
Philosophical Maxims
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