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Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 2 weeks ago
There is only one way to...

There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing and be nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
3 months 1 week ago
One should emulate works and deeds...

One should emulate works and deeds of virtue, not arguments about it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 1 week ago
When the Superior Man (Junzi)...

When the Superior Man (Junzi) eats he does not try to stuff himself; at rest he does not seek perfect comfort; he is diligent in his work and careful in speech. He avails himself to people of the Tao and thereby corrects himself. This is the kind of person of whom you can say, "he loves learning."

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
2 months 1 week ago
Democratic socialists are either proletarians who...

Democratic socialists are either proletarians who are not yet sufficiently clear about the conditions of the liberation of their class, or they are representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, a class which, prior to the achievement of democracy and the socialist measures to which it gives rise, has many interests in common with the proletariat. It follows that, in moments of action, the communists will have to come to an understanding with these democratic socialists, and in general to follow as far as possible a common policy with them - provided that these socialists do not enter into the service of the ruling bourgeoisie and attack the communists. It is clear that this form of co-operation in action does not exclude the discussion of differences.

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Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
2 months 3 weeks ago
It lays down, as is generally...

It lays down, as is generally known, that our speculations upon all subjects whatsoever, pass necessarily through three successive stages: a Theological stage, in which free play is given to spontaneous fictions admitting of no proof; the Metaphysical stage, characterized by the prevalence of personified abstractions or entities; lastly, the Positive stage, based upon an exact view of the real facts of the case.

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p. 36
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
The compassionate are not rich; therefore,...

The compassionate are not rich; therefore, the rich are not compassionate.

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p. 89
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
A human being possessed by a...

A human being possessed by a belief and not eager to pass it on to others is a phenomenon alien to the earth, where our mania for salvation makes life unbreathable.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 3 weeks ago
Africans are always vicious... mostly inclined...

Africans are always vicious... mostly inclined to lasciviousness, vengeance, theft and lies.

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As quoted in David Johnson, 'Representing the Cape "Hottentots"
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 weeks ago
In their nomination to office they...

In their nomination to office they will not appoint to the exercise of authority as to a pitiful job, but as to a holy function.

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Volume iii, p. 356
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 3 weeks ago
In England, and in all Roman...

In England, and in all Roman Catholic countries, the lottery of the church is in reality much more advantageous than is necessary.

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Chapter X, Part II, p. 155.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 3 weeks ago
You believe that I run after...

You believe that I run after the strange because I do not know the beautiful; no, it is because you do not know the beautiful that I seek the strange.

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F160
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 2 weeks ago
When Fortune flatters…

When Fortune flatters, she does it to betray.

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Maxim 277
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 2 weeks ago
Our aim is precisely to establish...

Our aim is precisely to establish the human kingdom as a pattern of values in distinction from the material world. But the subjectivity which we thus postulate as the standard of truth is no narrowly individual subjectivism, for as we have demonstrated, it is not only one's own self that one discovers in the cogito, but those of others too. Contrary to the philosophy of Descartes, contrary to that of Kant, when we say "I think" we are attaining to ourselves in the presence of the other, and we are just as certain of the other as we are of ourselves. Thus the man who discovers himself directly in the cogito also discovers all the others, and discovers them as the condition of his own existence. He realizes that he can't be anything unless others recognize him as such. I cannot obtain any truth whatsoever about myself, except through the mediation of another. The other is indispensable to my existence, and equally so to any knowledge I can have of myself.

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p. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
All who are not lunatics are...

All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can only be refuted by science: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.

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"The Science to Save Us from Science," The New York Times Magazine, 3/19/1950
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 2 weeks ago
The great problems of life -...

The great problems of life - sexuality, of course, among others - are always related to the primordial images of the collective unconscious. These images are really balancing or compensating factors which correspond with the problems life presents in actuality. This is not to be marvelled at, since these images are deposits representing the accumulated experience of thousands of years of struggle for adaptation and existence.

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Ch. 5, p. 271
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 2 weeks ago
Confession should be only in secret...

Confession should be only in secret before God, who knows everything anyway, and thus it could remain hidden in one's innermost being. But at a dinner and a woman! A dinner-it is not some hidden, remote place, nor is the lighting dim, nor is the mood like that among graves, nor are the listeners silent or invisibly present.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months ago
Steiner goes further than this --...

Steiner goes further than this -- and this is his own central contribution to modern thought. He states that once we have made a habit of remembering Mozart and the stars, we shall find ourselves developing powers of 'spiritual vision.' We shall never again feel ourselves to be helpless victims of the external world.

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p. 169
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 3 weeks ago
Observe, observe perpetually.

Observe, observe perpetually.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
I call upon you, young men,...

I call upon you, young men, to obey your heart, and be the nobility of this land. In every age of the world, there has been a leading nation, one of a more generous sentiment, whose eminent citizens were willing to stand for the interests of general justice and humanity, at the risk of being called, by the men of the moment, chimerical and fantastic. Which should be that nation but these States? Which should lead that movement, if not New England? Who should lead the leaders, but the Young American?

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
Understand that all the evils from...

Understand that all the evils from which you suffer, you yourselves cause by yielding to the suggestions by which emperors, kings, members of parliament, governors, officers, capitalists, priests, authors, artists, and all who need this fraud of patriotism in order to live upon your labour, deceive you!

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Patriotism and Government
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
3 months 1 week ago
Form no covetous desire, so that...

Form no covetous desire, so that the demon of greediness may not deceive thee, and the treasure of the world may not be tasteless to thee.

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Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
4 months 1 week ago
War is the father and king...

War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free. War is the father and king of all, and has produced some as gods and some as men, and has made some slaves and some free.

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Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
3 weeks 5 days ago
A created thing is never invented...

A created thing is never invented and it is never true: it is always and ever itself.

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Creation
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 2 weeks ago
As for him who neither possesses...

As for him who neither possesses nor can acquire them, let him take to heart the words of Hesiod: He is the best of all who thinks for himself in all things. He, too, is good who takes advice from a wiser (person). But he who neither thinks for himself, nor lays to heart another's wisdom, this is a useless man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 2 weeks ago
One day, we shall stand up...

One day, we shall stand up and our backsides will remain attached to our seats.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
To be without some of the...

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 2 weeks ago
When someone hides something behind a...
When someone hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as well, there is not much to praise in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand regarding seeking and finding "truth" within the realm of reason. If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare "look, a mammal' I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic truth which contains not a single point which would be "true in itself" or really and universally valid apart from man. At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the metamorphosis of the world into man.
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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 2 weeks ago
We cannot always choose the vocation...

We cannot always choose the vocation to which we believe we are called. Our social relations, to some extent, have already begun to form before we are in a position to determine them.

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Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 37
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 3 days ago
Ira festuca est, odium trabes est....

Anger is a weed; hate is the tree.

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58 Alternate versions: Anger is a stem, hate is a trunk. Anger is the mote, hate is the beam.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
3 days ago
You have the courage to tell...

You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the effort of men who are better than you. If this be arrogance, as some of your critics observed, it is still the truth that had to said in the age of the Welfare State.

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Mises' letter to Ayn Rand praising Atlas Shrugged,(23 January 1958), quoted in Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism (2007).
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
When we know....
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Main Content / General
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 2 weeks ago
I could never stand more than...

I could never stand more than three months of dreaming at a time without feeling an irresistible desire to plunge into society. To plunge into society meant to visit my superior, Anton Antonich Syetochkin. He was the only permanent acquaintance I have had in my life, and I even wonder at the fact myself now. But I even went to see him only when that phase came over me, and when my dreams had reached such a point of bliss that it became essential to embrace my fellows and all mankind immediately. And for that purpose I needed at least one human being at hand who actually existed. I had to call on Anton Antonich, however, on Tuesday - his at-home day; so I always had to adjust my passionate desire to embrace humanity so that it might fall on a Tuesday.

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Part 2, Chapter 2
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 2 weeks ago
The advantage of a bad memory...
The advantage of a bad memory is that one can enjoy the same good things for the first time several times.
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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 3 weeks ago
Americans of all ages, all stations...

Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations... In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.

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Book Two, Chapter V.
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 2 weeks ago
Show me what thou truly lovest,...

Show me what thou truly lovest, what thou seekest and strivest for with thy whole heart when thou hopest to attain to true en joyment of thyself-and thou hast thereby shown me thy Life. What thou lovest, in that thou livest. This very Love is thy Life, the root, the seat, the central point of thy being. All other emotions within thee have life only in so far as they are governed by this one central emotion.

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P. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 2 weeks ago
Two things fill the mind with...

Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

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Translated by Lewis White Beck Two things fill the heart with renewed and increasing awe and reverence the more often and the more steadily that they are meditated on: the starry skies above me and the moral law inside me.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 2 weeks ago
As for Adler, I was much...

As for Adler, I was much impressed by a personal experience. Once, in 1919, I reported to him a case which to me did not seem particularly Adlerian, but which he found no difficulty in analyzing in terms of his theory of inferiority feelings, although he had not even seen the child. Slightly shocked, I asked him how he could be so sure. "Because of my thousandfold experience," he replied; whereupon I could not help saying: "And with this new case, I suppose, your experience has become thousand-and-one-fold."

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 2 weeks ago
Only that position can impart dignity...

Only that position can impart dignity in which we do not appear as servile tools but rather create independently within our circle.

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Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 38
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
What does not exist must be...

What does not exist must be something, or it would be meaningless to deny its existence; and hence we need the concept of being, as that which belongs even to the non-existent.

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Principles of Mathematics (1903), p. 450
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
How many disappointments are conducive to...

How many disappointments are conducive to bitterness? One or a thousand, depending on the subject.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
I do not believe that science...

I do not believe that science per se is an adequate source of happiness, nor do I think that my own scientific outlook has contributed very greatly to my own happiness, which I attribute to defecating twice a day with unfailing regularity.

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Letter to W. W. Norton (publisher), 27 January, 1931
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
2 months 3 weeks ago
I can cure the gout or...

I can cure the gout or stone in some, sooner than Divinity, Pride, or Avarice in others.

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Section 9
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
2 months 4 weeks ago
He is worst of all, that...

He is worst of all, that is malicious against his friends.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 3 days ago
Mr. Darwin's hypothesis is not, so...

Mr. Darwin's hypothesis is not, so far as I am aware, inconsistent with any known biological fact; on the contrary, if admitted, the facts of Development, of Comparative Anatomy, of Geographical Distribution, and of Palaeontology, become connected together, and exhibit a meaning such as they never possessed before; and I, for one, am fully convinced that if not precisely true, that hypothesis is as near an approximation to the truth as, for example, the Copernican hypothesis was to the true theory of the planetary motions.

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Ch.2, p. 127
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
A good symbol is the best...

A good symbol is the best argument and is a missionary to persuade thousands.

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Poetry and Imagination
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
3 weeks 5 days ago
Humans are prone to status quo...

Humans are prone to status quo bias. So let's do a thought-experiment. Imagine we stumble across an advanced civilisation that has abolished predation, disease, famine, and all the horrors of primitive Darwinian life. The descendants of archaic lifeforms flourish unmolested in their wildlife parks - free living, but not "wild". Should we urge scrapping their regime of compassionate stewardship of the living world - and a return to asphyxiation, disembowelling and being eaten alive? Or is a happy biosphere best conserved intact? Reply to "Should humans wipe out all carnivorous animals so the succeeding generations of herbivores can live in peace?"

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, Quora, 16 Jun. 2018
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
3 months 3 weeks ago
Truth is a standard…

Truth is a standard both of itself and of falsity.

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Part II, Prop. XLIII, Scholium
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 weeks ago
The frontiers are not east or...

The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact, though that fact be his neighbor, there is an unsettled wilderness between him and Canada, between him and the setting sun, or, farther still, between him and it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 2 weeks ago
If the thought enunciates an object...

If the thought enunciates an object as a truth, it is only as a challenge to this object's own self-fulfillment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 1 week ago
Does man think because he has...

Does man think because he has found that thinking pays? Does he bring his children up because he has found it pays?

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§ 467
Philosophical Maxims
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