“Men who are governed by reason desire for themselves nothing which they do not also desire for the rest of mankind, and, consequently, are just, faithful, and honorable in their conduct.”
— Baruch Spinoza, Ethics
“Alas for the affairs of men! When they are fortunate, one may liken them to a shadow; and if they are unfortunate a wet sponge with one dash blots out the picture.”
— Aeschylus, Oresteia
“The person of superior integrity does not insist upon his integrity; for this reason, he has integrity. The person of inferior integrity never loses sight of his integrity; for this reason, he lacks integrity.”
— Laozi, Daodejing, Mair tr. (Ch 38)
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“Time and space come into being together and are therefore probably one, like subject and object. Space is enduring time — time is fluid, variable space. Space — the basis of everything enduring — time — the basis of everything changeable.”
— Novalis, General Draft
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“Be warned in time and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood.”
— Oscar Wilde, “Letter to James McNeill Whistler (23 February 1885)”
“No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.”
— Bertrand Russell, Justice in War-Time
“Our institutions and conditions rest upon deep-seated ideas. To change those conditions and at the same time leave the underlying ideas and values intact means only a superficial transformation, one that cannot be permanent or bring real betterment.”
— Emma Goldman, My Disillusionment in Russia
“It oppresses a refined soul to know that anyone is under an obligation, a coarse one to be under an obligation to anyone.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
“All men are equal and free: society, by nature and destination, is thus autonomous, one might say, ungovernable. ... Whosoever lays a hand on me in order to govern me is an usurper and a tyrant; I declare him my enemy.”
— Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Confessions of a Revolutionary
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“Since it lacks physical form, the mind can never be harmed by anything, but because it clings to the body it is oppressed by the body’s suffering.”
— Śāntideva, Bodhicaryāvatāra, Crosby & Skilton tr. (6:52)
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“The real philosopher has only one plan of action: virtue and prudence; for the only good and bad fortune lie in prudence or rashness.”
— Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom
“The alms given to a naked man in the street do not fulfill the obligations of the state, which owes to every citizen a certain subsistence, a proper nourishment, convenient clothing, and a kind of life not incompatible with health.”
— Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws
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“Let it be considered that what is more wholesome than any particular belief is integrity of belief, and that to avoid looking into the support of any belief from a fear that it may turn out rotten is quite as immoral as it is disadvantageous.”
— Charles Sanders Peirce
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“I am a convinced advocate of economic and social equality because I know that, without it, liberty, justice, human dignity, morality, and the well-being of individuals, as well as the prosperity of nations, will never amount to more than a pack of lies.”
— Mikhail Bakunin
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“Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from concepts; mathematical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from the construction of concepts.”
— Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
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“A man when drunk is led by a boy, stumbling and not knowing where he goes, since his soul is wet. A ray of light the dry soul, wisest and best.”
— Heraclitus, Fragments, B117 & B118
“Art is in itself noble; that is why the artist has no fear of what is common. This, indeed, is already ennobled when he takes it up.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections
“The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion.”
— Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays
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“At the present time there still exist many doctrines which choose to leave in the shadow certain troubling aspects of a too complex situation. But their attempt to lie to us is in vain. Cowardice doesn’t pay.”
— Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity
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“It is their character indeed that makes people who they are. But it is by reason of their actions that they are happy or the reverse.”
— Aristotle, Poetics
“Thought can in an instant transport us into the most distant regions of the universe; or even beyond the universe, into the unbounded chaos, where nature is supposed to lie in total confusion.”
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
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