76,935 books
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286,290 voters
“Stand amongst the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer.”
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“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
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“I have learned to walk: since then I have run. I have learned to fly: since then I do not have to be pushed in order to move.
Now I am nimble, now I fly, now I see myself under myself, now a god dances within me.”
― Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Now I am nimble, now I fly, now I see myself under myself, now a god dances within me.”
― Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
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Philosophy
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— last activity Jan 22, 2026 12:10PM
What is Philosophy? Why is it important? How do you use it? This group looks at these questions and others: ethics, government, economics, skepticism, ...more
Political Philosophy and Ethics
— 6302 members
— last activity 13 hours, 54 min ago
Study and discussion of the important questions of ethical and political philosophy from Confucius and Socrates to the present. Rules (see also the ...more
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