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Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 2 weeks ago
But simultaneously with the development of...

But simultaneously with the development of capitalist production the credit system also develops. The money-capital which the capitalist cannot as yet employ in his own business is employed by others, who pay him interest for its use.

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Vol. II, Ch. XVII, p. 325.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 2 weeks ago
All things are artificial, for nature...

All things are artificial, for nature is the Art of God.

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Section 16
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 1 week ago
A utopia of judicial reticence: take...

A utopia of judicial reticence: take away life, but prevent the patient from feeling it; deprive the prisoner of all rights, but do not inflict pain; impose penalties free of all pain. Recourse to psycho-pharmacology and to various physiological 'disconnectors', even if it is temporary, is a logical consequence of this 'non-corporal' penalty.

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Chapter One, The Spectacle of the Scaffold
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 4 weeks ago
Nature is a structure of evolving...

Nature is a structure of evolving processes. The reality is the process.

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Ch. 4: "The Eighteenth Century", p. 102
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months 1 week ago
Allow me, Gentlemen, to pose this...

Allow me, Gentlemen, to pose this question in a more serious manner. Do I need to tell you that it is not a question at first of the natural, physiological, ethnographic difference that exists between individuals, but of the social difference, that is produced by the economic organization of society? Give to all the children, from their birth, the same means of maintenance, education, and instruction; give then to all the men thus raised the same social milieu, the same means of earning their living by their own labor, and you will see then that many of these differences, that we believe to be natural differences, will disappear because they are nothing but the effect of an unequal division of the conditions of intellectual and physical development - of the conditions of life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
3 months 6 days ago
The only satisfied rationalists today are...

The only satisfied rationalists today are blinkered scientists or Marxists.

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Ch. 7, p. 113
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
3 months 6 days ago
A bad review is even less...

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

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Quoted in The Times (6 July 1989).
Philosophical Maxims
Porphyry
Porphyry
3 months 4 weeks ago
The Pythagoreans made kindness to beasts...

The Pythagoreans made kindness to beasts a training in humanity and pity.

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3, 20, 7
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 1 week ago
Those who promise us paradise on...

Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.

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As quoted in In Passing: Condolences and Complaints on Death, Dying, and Related Disappointments (2005) by Jon Winokur, p. 144
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
4 weeks 1 day ago
Drunkenness is nothing….

Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.

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Line 18.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
The aphorism is cultivated only by...

The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 1 week ago
We know as little of a...

We know as little of a supreme being as of Matter. But there is as little doubt of the existence of a supreme being as of Matter. The world beyond is reality, and experiential fact. We only don't understand it.

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Letter to Morton Kelsey (1958) as quoted by Morton Kelsey, Myth, History & Faith: The Mysteries of Christian Myth & Imagination (1974) Ch.VIII
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 2 weeks ago
I wished, by treating Psychology like...

I wished, by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her to become one.

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A Plea for Psychology as a Natural Science, 1892
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
4 days ago
If A is success in...

If A is success in life, then A = x + y + z. Work is x, play is y and z is keeping your mouth shut.

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Said to Samuel J Woolf, Berlin, Summer 1929. Cited with additional notes in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice and Freeman Dyson, Princeton UP (2010) p 230
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 1 week ago
That a man be willing, when...

That a man be willing, when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace, and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.

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The First Part, Chapter 14, p. 64-65
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 2 weeks ago
Scott does this still better than...

Scott does this still better than Wordsworth, and a very second-rate landscape does it more effectually than any poet. What made Wordsworth's poems a medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a Source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared in by all human beings; which had no connexion with struggle or imperfection, but would be made richer by every improvement in the physical or social condition of mankind. From them I seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed. And I felt myself at once better and happier as I came under their influence.

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(pp. 147-148)
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 3 weeks ago
The pathos of it all is...

The pathos of it all is that the America which is to be protected by a huge military force is not the America of the people, but that of the privileged class; the class which robs and exploits the masses, and controls their lives from the cradle to the grave. No less pathetic is it that so few people realize that preparedness never leads to peace, but that it is indeed the road to universal slaughter.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 2 weeks ago
If the material world rests upon...

If the material world rests upon a similar ideal world, this ideal world must rest upon some other; and so on, without end. It were better, therefore, never to look beyond the present material world. By supposing it to contain the principle of its order within itself, we really assert it to be God; and the sooner we arrive at that Divine Being, so much the better. When you go one step beyond the mundane system, you only excite an inquisitive humour which it is impossible ever to satisfy.

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Philo to Cleanthes, Part IV
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 2 days ago
Valour, however unfortunate, commands great respect...

Valour, however unfortunate, commands great respect even from enemies: but the Romans despise cowardice, even though it be prosperous.

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Aemilius Paulus 26 (Tr. Stewart and Long)
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 2 weeks ago
No protracted war can fail to...

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.

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Book Three, Chapter XXII.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 2 weeks ago
England, it is true, in causing...

England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindostan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution.

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"The British Rule in India," New York Daily Tribune, 10 June 1853.
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
2 months 2 weeks ago
During the Vietnam War, which lasted...

During the Vietnam War, which lasted longer than any war we've ever been in -- and which we lost -- every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.

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Vonnegut at 80 Interview with David Hoppe Alternet
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 2 weeks ago
Wisdom and contrivance are shown in...

Wisdom and contrivance are shown in overcoming difficulties, so there is no place for them in a Being for whom no difficulties exist.

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pages 176-177; Early Modern Texts page 16
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 1 week ago
If it's really true, that the...

If it's really true, that the museum at Liberty University has dinosaur fossils which are labelled as being 3000 years old, then that is an educational disgrace. It is debauching the whole idea of a university, and I would strongly encourage any members of Liberty University who may be here...to leave and go to a proper university.

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At Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia, (23 October 2006) Broadcasted by C-SPAN2
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 week ago
When we know....
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Main Content / General
William Whewell
William Whewell
2 weeks 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
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 2 weeks ago
You had that action and counteraction...

You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.

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Volume iii, p. 277
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 1 week ago
The ontological concept of truth is...

The ontological concept of truth is in the centre of a logic which may serve as a model of pre- technological rationality. It is the rationality of a two-dimensional universe of discourse which, contrasts with the of thought and behavior that develop in the execution of the technological project.

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p. 130
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 weeks ago
After all, it is my principle...

After all, it is my principle that the will of the Majority should always prevail.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months 1 week ago
If there is a state, then...

If there is a state, then necessarily there is domination and consequently slavery. A state without slavery, open or camouflaged, is inconceivable - that is why we are enemies of the state.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 4 days ago
They who know the truth...

They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
4 weeks 1 day ago
It would be some consolation for...

It would be some consolation for the feebleness of our selves and our works, if all things should perish as slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 5 days ago
Our grand business undoubtedly is, not...

Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 1 week ago
A good guide will take you...

A good guide will take you through the more important streets more often than he takes you down side streets; a bad guide will do the opposite. In philosophy I'm a rather bad guide.

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As quoted in Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Information (2008) edited by Alois Pichler and Herbert Hrachovec, p. 140
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
If throughout your life you abstain...

If throughout your life you abstain from murder, theft, fornication, perjury, blasphemy, and disrespect toward your parents, your church, and your king, you are conventionally held to deserve moral admiration even if you have never done a single kind or generous or useful action. This very inadequate notion of virtue is an outcome of taboo morality, and has done untold harm.

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p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
3 months 5 days ago
At one time in his life...

At one time in his life the apostate radically changes his political, religious or philosophical convictions by taking up all possible means of argumentation against that which he formerly held to be true, and lives now for the sake of its negation. His new ideas and opinions consist in continuous acts of revenge on his spiritual past.

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Manfred Frings, Max Scheler (1996), p. 60
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 2 weeks ago
An infirmity which affects the whole...

An infirmity which affects the whole race, is no proper object for the scorn of an individual who belongs to that race, and who, before he could expose it, must himself have been its slave.

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p. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months ago
The eulogies of my intelligence are...

The eulogies of my intelligence are positively intended to evade the question "Is what she says true?"

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Letter to her parents (1943), as quoted in the Introduction by Siân Miles p. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 weeks 1 day ago
I put my body through its...

I put my body through its paces like a war horse; I keep it lean, sturdy, prepared. I harden it and I pity it. I have no other steed. I keep my brain wide awake, lucid, unmerciful. I unleash it to battle relentlessly so that, all light, it may devour the darkness of the flesh. I have no other workshop where I may transform darkness into light. I keep my heart flaming, courageous, restless. I feel in my heart all commotions and all contradictions, the joys and sorrows of life. But I struggle to subdue them to a rhythm superior to that of the mind, harsher than that of my heart - to the ascending rhythm of the Universe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
5 months 4 days ago
Pleasure, or pain, is not only...

Pleasure, or pain, is not only good, or evil, in itself, but the measure of what is good or evil, in every object of desire or aversion; for the ultimate reason why we pursue one thing, and avoid another, is because we expect pleasure from the former, and apprehend pain from the latter. If we sometimes decline a present pleasure, it is not because we are averse to pleasure itself, but because we conceive, that in the present instance, it will be necessarily connected with a greater pain. In like manner, if we sometimes voluntarily submit to a present pain, it is because we judge that it is necessarily connected with a greater pleasure.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 2 weeks ago
I discuss with myself...

I discuss with myself questions of politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to follow any idea, wise or mad that may present itself. ... My ideas are my harlots.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is the private dominion over...

It is the private dominion over things that condemns millions of people to be mere nonentities, living corpses without originality or power of initiative, human machines of flesh and blood, who pile up mountains of wealth for others and pay for it with a gray, dull and wretched existence for themselves. I believe that there can be no real wealth, social wealth, so long as it rests on human lives - young lives, old lives and lives in the making.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
Scaffolds, dungeons, jails flourish only in...

Scaffolds, dungeons, jails flourish only in the shadow of a faith - of that need to believe which has infested the mind forever. The devil pales beside the man who owns a truth, his truth. We are unfair to a Nero, a Tiberius: it was not they who invented the concept heretic: they were only degenerate dreamers who happened to be entertained by massacres. The real criminals are men who establish an orthodoxy on the religious or political level, men who distinguish between the faithful and the schismatic.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months ago
Let us have "sweet girl graduates"...

Let us have "sweet girl graduates" by all means. They will be none the less sweet for a little wisdom; and the "golden hair" will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within.

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Emancipation - Black and White
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
Monsieur ... I do not believe...

Monsieur ... I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 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
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
3 weeks 1 day ago
I feel, like all modern Americans,...

I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it. All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. That is a final fact of my inner consciousness, and for no religion could I deny its truth.

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p. 407
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 1 week ago
I think it is not helpful...

I think it is not helpful to apply Darwinian language too widely. Conquest of nation by nation is too distant for Darwinian explanations to be helpful. Darwinism is the differential survival of self-replicating genes in a gene pool, usually as manifested by individual behaviour, morphology, and phenotypes. Group selection of any kind is not Darwinism as Darwin understood it nor as I understand it. There is a very vague analogy between group selection and conquest of a nation by another nation, but I don't think it's a very helpful analogy. So I would prefer not to invoke Darwinian language for that kind of historical interpretation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 3 weeks ago
If this is philosophy it is...

If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.

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L 23
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 months 2 weeks ago
There is no practice of nonviolence...

There is no practice of nonviolence that does not negotiate fundamental ethical and political ambiguities, which means that "nonviolence" is not an absolute principle, but the name of an ongoing struggle.

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p. 23
Philosophical Maxims
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