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Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 1 week ago
I have often regretted my speech,...

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

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Maxim 1070
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 1 week ago
It is not only when it...

It is not only when it takes the form of physical addiction that sex is evil. It is also evil when it manifests itself as a way of satisfying the lust for power or the climber's craving for position and social distinction.

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Ch. 14, p. 358 [2012 reprint]
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
1 month 1 day ago
Human progress having reached a high...

Human progress having reached a high level through respect for the liberty and dignity of men, it has become desirable to re-affirm these evident truths: That differences of race, color, and creed are natural, and that diverse groups, institutions, and ideas are stimulating factors in the development of man; That to promote harmony in diversity is a responsible task of religion and statesmanship; That since no individual can express the whole truth, it is essential to treat with understanding and good will those whose views differ from our own; That by the testimony of history intolerance is the door to violence, brutality and dictatorship; and That the realization of human interdependence and solidarity is the best guard of civilization.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
4 months 2 weeks ago
Days of absence, sad and dreary, Clothed...

Days of absence,

sad and dreary, 

Clothed in sorrow's dark array,

Days of absence, I am weary: She I love is far away.

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Day of Absence, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months 3 weeks ago
Only the person who has faith...

Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 week 4 days ago
According to the technical language of...

According to the technical language of old writers, a thing and its qualities are described as subject and attributes; and thus a man's faculties and acts are attributes of which he is the subject. The mind is the subject in which ideas inhere. Moreover, the man's faculties and acts are employed upon external objects; and from objects all his sensations arise. Hence the part of a man's knowledge which belongs to his own mind, is subjective: that which flows in upon him from the world external to him, is objective.

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Part I Of Ideas, Book I Of Ideas in General, Chap. 4 Of the Difference and Opposition of Sensation and Ideas
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
2 weeks 6 days ago
Come then, and let us celebrate...

Come then, and let us celebrate in the best way we can the anniversary festival which the imperial city is keeping by sacrifices, with unusual splendour. And yet I feel how difficult it is for the human mind even to form a conception of that Sun who is not visible to the sense, if our notion of Him is to be derived from the Sun that is visible; but to express the same in language, however inadequately, is, perhaps, beyond the capability of man! To fitly explain His glory, I am very well aware, is a thing impossible; in lauding it, however, mediocrity seems the highest point to which human eloquence is able to attain.

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Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
4 months 2 weeks ago
It is enough to ask somebody...

It is enough to ask somebody for his weapons without saying 'I want to kill you with them', because when you have his weapons in hand, you can satisfy your desire.

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Book 1, Ch 44 (as translated by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella)
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
4 months 1 day ago
Man is a universe in little...

Man is a universe in little [Microcosm].

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Freeman (1948), p. 150
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 1 week ago
A proud man is always looking...

A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

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Book III, Chapter 8, "The Great Sin"
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 2 weeks ago
So many of my thoughts and...

So many of my thoughts and feelings are shared by the English that England has turned into a second native land of the mind for me.

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Journeys to England and Ireland, 1835.
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 month 1 week ago
Our claim is that a common...

Our claim is that a common political project is possible. This possibility of course will have to be verified and realized in practice. ... We are capable of democracy. The challange is to organize it politically.

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226
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 1 week ago
Receive an injury rather than do...

Receive an injury rather than do one.

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Maxim 5
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 1 week ago
What is now happening to the...

What is now happening to the people of the East as of the West is like what happens to every individual when he passes from childhood to adolescence and from youth to manhood. He loses what had hitherto guided his life and lives without direction, not having found a new standard suitable to his age, and so he invents all sorts of occupations, cares, distractions, and stupefactions to divert his attention from the misery and senselessness of his life. Such a condition may last a long time.

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VI
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
4 months 2 days ago
I am not adverting here to...

I am not adverting here to the alleged privacy of experience to its possessor. The point of view in question is not one accessible only to a single individual. Rather it is a type. It is often possible to take up a point of view other than one's own, so the comprehension of such facts is not limited to one's own case. There is a sense in which phenomenological facts are perfectly objective: one person can know or say of another what the quality of the other's experience is. They are subjective, however, in the sense that even this objective ascription of experience is possible only for someone sufficiently similar to the object of ascription to be able to adopt his point of view - to understand the ascription in the first person as well as in the third, so to speak. The more different from oneself the other experiencer is, the less success one can expect with this enterprise.

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pp. 171-172
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
Without effort and change, human life...

Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 days ago
May not this religious reticence, in...

May not this religious reticence, in these devout good souls, be perhaps a merit, and sign of health in them? Jocelin, Eadmer, and such religious men, have as yet nothing of 'Methodism;' no Doubt or even root of Doubt. Religion is not a diseased self-introspection, an agonising inquiry: their duties are clear to them, the way of supreme good plain, indisputable, and they are traveling on it. Religion lies over them like an all-embracing heavenly canopy, like an atmosphere and life-element, which is not spoken of, which in all things is presupposed without speech. Is not serene or complete Religion the highest aspect of human nature.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 3 weeks ago
If you have had your attention...

If you have had your attention directed to the novelties in thought in your own lifetime, you will have observed that almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.

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Ch. 3: "The Century of Genius", pp. 67-68
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
3 months 1 week ago
It may be confidently asserted that...

It may be confidently asserted that no man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. And the desire of rectifying these mistakes, is the noble ambition of an enlightened understanding, the impulse of feelings that Philosophy invigorates.

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A Vindication of the Rights of Men
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 2 weeks ago
Another argument of hope may be...

Another argument of hope may be drawn from this - that some of the inventions already known are such as before they were discovered it could hardly have entered any man's head to think of; they would have been simply set aside as impossible. For in conjecturing what may be men set before them the example of what has been, and divine of the new with an imagination preoccupied and colored by the old; which way of forming opinions is very fallacious, for streams that are drawn from the springheads of nature do not always run in the old channels.

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Aphorism 109
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 week 4 days ago
It was by the sober sense...

It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.

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Letter to Arthur Campbell
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 1 week ago
Our aim as scientists is objective...

Our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty. Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 1 week ago
The second requirement of a virus-friendly...

The second requirement of a virus-friendly environment - that it should obey a program of coded instructions - is again only quantitatively less true for brains than for cells or computers. We sometimes obey orders from one another, but also we sometimes don't. Nevertheless, it is a telling fact that, the world over, the vast majority of children follow the religion of their parents rather than any of the other available religions. Instructions to genuflect, to bow towards Mecca, to nod one's head rhythmically towards the wall, to shake like a maniac, to "speak in tongues" - the list of such arbitrary and pointless motor patterns offered by religion alone is extensive - are obeyed, if not slavishly, at least with some reasonably high statistical probability.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 3 weeks ago
Motherhood in the true sense should...

Motherhood in the true sense should embrace all children. Because so few realize this truth, child life is so empty of warmth, of love, of color, and beauty. A home-what is it to-day but a cage from which most of its inhabitants wish to escape? No, I should never have found happiness in such a place. My ideals, the struggle for them, and whatever hardships and suffering they have brought, far from wasting my life, have enriched it a thousandfold. To me it has been a grand adventure which I should not have missed for all the wealth in the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 4 days ago
Get thee hence, Satan: for it...

Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

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4:10 (KJV) Said to Satan.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 1 week ago
So the majority of the highest...

So the majority of the highest classes of that age, even the popes and ecclesiastics, really believed in nothing at all. They did not believe in the Church doctrine, for they saw its insolvency; but neither could they follow Francis of Assisi, Kelchitsky, and most of the sectarians in acknowledging the moral, social teaching of Christ, for that undermined their social position. And so these people remained without any religious view of life. And, having none, they could have no standard with which to estimate what was good and what was bad art, but that of personal enjoyment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 1 week ago
Science fiction may be defined as...

Science fiction may be defined as that branch of literature which deals with the response of human beings to advances in science and technology. Actual change in science and technology, occurring quickly enough and striking deeply enough to affect a human being in the course of his normal lifetime, is a phenomenon peculiar to the world only since the Industrial Revolution ... The first well-known writer who responded to this new factor in human affairs by dealing regularly with science fiction, by studying the effect of additional scientific advance upon mankind ... was Jules Verne. In the English language, the early master was H. G. Wells. Between them, they laid the foundation for every theme upon which science fiction writers have been ringing variations ever since.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 2 weeks ago
But the other conception, namely the...

But the other conception, namely the infusion of the soul, it is piously and suitably believed, was without any sin, so that while the soul was being infused, she would at the same time be cleansed from original sin and adorned with the gifts of God to receive the holy soul thus infused. And thus, in the very moment in which she began to live, she was without all sin.

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Weimar edition of Martin Luther's Works, English translation edited by J. Pelikan [Concordia: St. Louis], Vol. 4, 694
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 1 week ago
Monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle...

Monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical tribunals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of the gods, that razing of Indian temples and Egyptian colossi, which had looked on the sun 3,000 years: just because a jealous god had said, 'Thou shalt make no graven image.'

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
It is a general popular error...

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the publick to be the most anxious for its welfare.

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Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
2 weeks 6 days ago
They are irreverent to the gods...

They are irreverent to the gods and disobedient to our edicts, lenient as they are. For we allow none of them to be dragged to the altars unwillingly...It is therefore my pleasure to announce and publish to all the people by this edict, that they must not abet the seditions of the clergy...They may hold their meetings, if they wish, and offer prayers according to their established use...and for the future, let all people live in harmony...Men should be taught and won over by reason, not by blows, insults, and corporal punishments. I therefore most earnestly admonish the adherents of the true religion not to injure or insult the Galilaeans in any way...Those who are in the wrong in matters of supreme importance are objects of pity rather than of hate...

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Edict to the people of Bostra, reported in Henry Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 1 day ago
Whatever may happen to thee, it...

Whatever may happen to thee, it was prepared for thee from all eternity; and the implication of causes was from eternity spinning the thread of thy being, and of that which is incident to it. Alternate Translation: Whatever may befall you, it was preordained for you from everlasting.

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X, 5
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
O tenderly the haughty day Fills...

O tenderly the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire; One morn is in the mighty heaven, And one in our desire.

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Ode, st. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
3 months 4 weeks ago
He said they that were serious...

He said they that were serious in ridiculous matters would be ridiculous in serious affairs.

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Cato the Elder
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
1 month 6 days ago
Now the argument that I make...

Now the argument that I make in my book is that part of the current disaffection with liberalism is not from any of its basic principles, but... is the result of certain deformations of liberal principles that were carried to extremes that led... to bad outcomes... There's a move in this direction on the right and... on the left.

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12:25 Ref: Francis Fukuyama, Liberalism and Its Discontents
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 1 week ago
Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially...

Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist.

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Ch. XVI: Of Nationality, As Connected with Representative Government (p. 382)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
No man is liberated from fear...

No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is; no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.

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Dreams and Facts, 1919
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks ago
First, there must be....
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Main Content / General
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
4 months 1 week ago
The moment we no longer have...

The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie - a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days - but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.

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p. 70
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 week 4 days ago
The policy of American government is...

The policy of American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits.

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Letter to M. L'Hommande, (1787), as quoted in The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia (1900), edited by John P. Foley, p. 500
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 3 weeks ago
The liturgy of emptiness dispels the...

The liturgy of emptiness dispels the capitalist economy of the commodity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 4 days ago
Beware of false prophets, which come...

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

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Matthew 7:15 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
3 months 2 days ago
Nietzsche, driven by the absolute demand...

Nietzsche, driven by the absolute demand of his existential truthfulness, could not abide the bourgeois world, even when its representative had human nobility.

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Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months 3 weeks ago
What most people in our culture...

What most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal.

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Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
3 weeks 1 day ago
Human nature is full of riddles,...

Human nature is full of riddles, and one of these riddles is this: How is it that people who have been crushed by the sheer weight of slavery and cast to the bottom of the pit can nevertheless find strength to rise up and free themselves, first in spirit then in body, while those who soar unhampered over the peaks of freedom suddenly appear to lose the taste for freedom, lose the will to defend it, and hopelessly confused and lost almost begin to crave slavery?

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"Argentina's President Javier Milei Loves Being the Skunk at the Garden Party" (at 47m35s), Honestly with Bari Weiss, 6 June 2024.
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 week 4 days ago
The resolution of complex Facts into...

The resolution of complex Facts into precise and measured partial Facts, we call the 'Decomposition of Facts'. This process is requisite for the progress of science, but does not necessarily lead to progress. The Conceptions by which Facts are bound together, are suggested by the sagacity of discoverers. But a supply of appropriate hypotheses cannot be constructed by rule, nor without inventive talent. The truth of tentative hypotheses must be tested by their application to facts. The discoverer must be ready, carefully to try his hypotheses in this manner, and to reject them if they will not bear the test, in spite of indolence and vanity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Porphyry
Porphyry
3 months 3 weeks ago
Things essentially incorporeal, because they are...

Things essentially incorporeal, because they are more excellent than all body and place, are every where, not with interval, but impartibly. Things essentially incorporeal are not locally present with bodies but are present with them when they please; by verging towards them so far as they are naturally adapted so to verge. They are not, however, present with them locally, but through habitude, proximity, and alliance. Things essentially incorporeal, are not present with bodies, by hypostasis and essence; for they are not mingled with bodies. But they impart a certain power which is proximate to bodies, through verging towards them. For tendency constitutes a certain secondary power proximate to bodies.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 3 weeks ago
One cannot ignore half of life...

One cannot ignore half of life for the purposes of science, and then claim that the results of science give a full and adequate picture of the meaning of life. All discussions of 'life' which begin with a description of man's place on a speck of matter in space, in an endless evolutionary scale, are bound to be half-measures, because they leave out most of the experiences which are important to use as human beings.

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p. 309
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 4 days ago
For he must rule as king...

For he must rule as king until God has put all enemies under his feet. And the last enemy, death, is to be brought to nothing.

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Paul of Tarsus, 1 Corinthians 15: 25-26, NWT
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 3 weeks ago
They certainly demonstrate that Seth, whether...

They certainly demonstrate that Seth, whether an aspect of Jane Robert's unconscious mind or a genuine "spirit," was of a high level of intelligence. Yet when Jane Roberts produced a book that purported to be the after-death journal of the philosopher William James, it was difficult to take it seriously. James's works are noted for their vigour and clarity of style; Jane Robert's "communicator" writes like an undergraduate . . . there is a clumsiness here that is quite unlike James's swift-moving, colloquial prose.

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p. 390
Philosophical Maxims
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