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Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 2 weeks ago
In the study of ideas, it...

In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as if it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasoning grasps at straws for premises and floats on gossamer for deductions.

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p. 91.
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 5 days ago
The fundament upon which all our...

The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 1, § 1
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is not enough to accept...

It is not enough to accept a concept of order and live by it; that is cowardice, and such cowardice cannot result from freedom. Chaos must be faced. Real order must be preceded by a descent into chaos.

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Chapter Three, The Romantic Outsider
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 days ago
He who is in love is...

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

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The Method of Nature, 1841
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 3 weeks 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
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
3 months 4 days ago
Wit is the appearance, the external...

Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.

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Aphorism 26, as translated in Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms (1968)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 days 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
John Dewey
John Dewey
2 months 3 weeks ago
Genuine time, if it exists as...

Genuine time, if it exists as anything else except the measure of motions in space, is all one with the existence of individuals as individuals, with the creative, with the occurrence of unpredictable novelties. Everything that can be said contrary to this conclusion is but a reminder that an individual may lose his individuality, for individuals become imprisoned in routine and fall to the level of mechanisms. Genuine time then ceases to be an integral element of their being. Our behavior becomes predictable, because it is but an external rearrangement of what went before.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
2 months 1 week ago
It is at work everywhere, functioning...

It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in firs and starts . It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id. Everywhere it is machines- real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections. An organ-machine is plugged into an energy-source-machine: the one produces a flow that the other interrupts The breast is a machine that produces milk, and the mouth a machine coupled to it.

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The Desiring Machine
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
4 months 3 weeks ago
Now what has been said about...

Now what has been said about the Jews is also to be understood about Cahorsins, and anyone else depending upon the depravity of usury.

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art. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks 4 days ago
You must lay aside the burdens...

You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 3 days ago
Mr. Galton ...in his English Men...

Mr. Galton ...in his English Men of Science, has given ...cases showing individual variations in the type of memory... Some have it verbal. Others... for facts and figures, others for form. Most say... [it] must first be rationally conceived and assimilated.

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Ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 2 weeks ago
You are in the same manner...

You are in the same manner surrounded with a small circle of persons... full of desire. They demand of you the benefits of desire... You are therefore properly the king of desire. ...equal in this to the greatest kings of the earth... It is desire that constitutes their power; that is, the possession of things that men covet.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 4 days ago
For my part for one, though...

For my part for one, though I make no doubt of preferring the antient Course, or almost any other to this vile chimera, and sick mans dream of Government yet I could not actively, or with a good heart, and clear conscience, go to the establishment of a monarchical despotism in the place of this system of Anarchy.

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Letter to Richard Burke (26 September 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 414
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 week ago
I have learned...
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Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 1 week ago
There is little less trouble in...

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom. 

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Book I, Ch. 39
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 1 week ago
Methinks I am like a man,...

Methinks I am like a man, who having struck on many shoals, and having narrowly escap'd shipwreck in passing a small frith, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous circumstances.

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Part 4, Section 7
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
3 months 3 weeks ago
You can tell the man who...

You can tell the man who rings true from the man who rings false, not by his deeds alone, but also by his desires.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim
Just now
Conflicting intellectual positions may actually come...

Conflicting intellectual positions may actually come to supplement one another. It is imperative in the present transitional period to make use of the intellectual twilight which dominates our epoch and in which all values and points of view appear in their genuine relativity. We must realize once and for all that the meanings which make up our world are simply an historically determined and continuously developing structure in which man develops, and are in no sense absolute.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 3 weeks ago
The superior man accords with the...

The superior man accords with the course of the Mean. Though he may be all unknown, unregarded by the world, he feels no regret. It is only the sage who is able for this.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
2 months 4 weeks ago
The irony of world history turns...

The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We, the "revolutionaries," the "rebels"-we are thriving far better on legal methods than on illegal methods and revolt. The parties of order, as they call themselves, are perishing under the legal conditions created by themselves. They cry despairingly with Odilon Barrot: la légalité notes tue, legality is the death of us; whereas we, under this legality, get firm muscles and rosy cheeks and look like eternal life.

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Introduction (1895) to Marx's The Class Struggles in France (1848-50), p. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 4 days ago
When Christianity came into the world...

When Christianity came into the world the task was simply to proclaim Christianity. The same is the case wherever Christianity is introduced into a country the religion of which is not Christianity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 days ago
For an occurrence to become an...

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 2 weeks ago
But if Germany, thanks to Hitler...

But if Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.

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p. 124
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 5 days ago
How much education may reconcile young...

How much education may reconcile young people to pain and sufference, the examples of Sparta do sufficiently shew; and they who have once brought themselves not to think bodily pain the greatest of evils, or that which they ought to stand most in fear of, have made no small advance toward virtue.

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Sec. 115
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 1 week ago
We are sleeping on a volcano......

We are sleeping on a volcano... A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon.

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Speaking in the Chamber of Deputies just prior to to outbreak of revolution in Europe (1848).
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 2 weeks ago
What excited me was the recognition...

What excited me was the recognition that this was simply another version of the problem that had obsessed me all of my life -- the problem of those moments when life seems entirely delightful, when we experience a sensation of what G.K. Chesterton called "absurd good news." Life normally strikes most of us as hard, dull and unsatisfying; but in these moments, consciousness seems to glow and expand, and all the contradictions seem to be resolved. Which of the two visions is true? My own reflections had led me to conclude that the vision of "absurd good news" is somehow broader and more comprehensive than the feeling that life is dull, boring and meaningless. Boredom is basically a feeling of narrowness, and surely a narrow vision is bound to be less true than a broad one?

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p. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 4 days ago
What is the essence of life?...

What is the essence of life? To serve others and to do good. Often given as a saying of Aristotle with no reference.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 4 weeks ago
What we are destroying is nothing...

What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stood.

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§ 118
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 day ago
Chinese script is not visual but...

Chinese script is not visual but iconic and tactile. It does not disturb the tribal bonds.

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(p. 72)
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 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
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 1 week ago
Man was born to live with...

Man was born to live with his fellow human beings. Separate him, isolate him, his character will go bad, a thousand ridiculous affects will invade his heart, extravagant thoughts will germinate in his brain, like thorns in an uncultivated land.

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The character Suzanne Simon, in La Religieuse [The Nun]
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 1 week ago
The annual produce of the land...

The annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means, but by increasing either the number of its productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed.

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Chapter III, p. 377.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 4 days ago
The object before us, to begin...

The object before us, to begin with, material production.

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Introduction, p. 3, first text page, first line.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 4 days ago
I shall keep it [the manuscript]...

I shall keep it [the manuscript] by me until the end of May for purposes of revision, and of adding malicious foot-notes.

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Letter to W. W. Norton, 17 February, 1931
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
3 months 3 weeks ago
The distance between oneself and other...

The distance between oneself and other persons and other species can fall anywhere on a continuum. Even for other persons the understanding of what it is like to be them is only partial, and when one moves to species very different from oneself, a lesser degree of partial understanding may still be available. The imagination is remarkably flexible. My point, however, is not that we cannot know what it is like to be a bat. I am not raising that epistemological problem. My point is rather that even to form a conception of what it is like to be a bat and a fortiori to know what it is like to be a bat, one must take up the bat's point of view.

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p. 172, note 8.
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 5 days ago
If children were brought into the...

If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence?

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"On the Sufferings of the World"
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
3 months 3 weeks ago
The animals themselves are incapable of...

The animals themselves are incapable of demanding their own liberation, or of protesting against their condition with votes, demonstrations, or boycotts. Human beings have the power to continue to oppress other species forever, or until we make this planet unsuitable for living beings. Will our tyranny continue, proving that morality counts for nothing when it clashes with selfinterest, as the most cynical of poets and philosophers have always said? Or will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible? The way in which we answer this question depends on the way in which each one of us, individually, answers it.

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Ch. 6: Speciesism Today
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 5 days ago
Fools have a habit of believing...

Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 months 1 day ago
Man is a sun and his...

Man is a sun and his senses are the planets.

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Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
2 months 3 weeks ago
All metaphysical theories are inconclusively vulnerable...

All metaphysical theories are inconclusively vulnerable to positivist attack.

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Ch. 9, p. 127
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 4 weeks ago
A proposition is completely logically analyzed...

A proposition is completely logically analyzed if its grammar is made completely clear: no matter what idiom it may be written or expressed in...

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Philosophical Remarks (1930), Part I (1)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 2 weeks ago
So far as cerebral structure goes......

So far as cerebral structure goes... it is clear that Man differs less from the Chimpanzee or the Orang, than these do even from the Monkeys, and that the difference between the brains of the Chimpanzee and of Man is almost insignificant, when compared with that between the Chimpanzee brain and that of a Lemur.

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Ch.2, p. 120
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 days ago
The result of your fifty or...

The result of your fifty or sixty years of religious reading in the four words: 'Be just and good,' is that in which all our enquiries must end.

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Letter to John Adams
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 day ago
Invention is the mother of all...

Invention is the mother of all necessities.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 3 days ago
The "I" who speaks in this...

The "I" who speaks in this book is by no means the author. Rather, the author wishes that the reader may come to see himself in this "I": that the reader may not simply relate to what is said here as he would to history, but rather that while reading he will actually converse with himself, deliberate back and forth, deduce conclusions, make decisions like his representative in the book, and through his own work and reflection, purely out of his own resources, develop and build within himself the philosophical disposition that is presented to him in this book merely as a picture.

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P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 4 weeks ago
Impossible to spend sleepless nights and...

Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
2 weeks 4 days ago
He has spent all his life...

He has spent all his life in letting down empty buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again.

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Vol. I, ch. 9, p. 310
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
3 weeks 6 days ago
Time and Space….

Time and Space ... It is not nature which imposes them upon us, it is we who impose them upon nature because we find them convenient.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 2 weeks ago
When I was in my teens,...

When I was in my teens, I invented a term to describe them. I call it 'holiday consciousness' . . . because I often experienced this sense of optimism and wide-awakeness when setting out on a journey or a holiday. It was always the feeling that the world is self-evidently complex and beautiful, and that life is so obviously good that man's boredom and defeat is an absurdity . . . And then I used to ask: Why do men forget this so easily? And the answer seemed obvious: because the human will is so flabby and weak. Instead of being self-controlled, self-driven creatures, most men are little more than leaves on a stream, they drift along hoping for the best. I once wrote that men are like grandfather clocks driven by watchsprings.

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p. 75
Philosophical Maxims
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