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Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
5 months 3 weeks ago
There ought to be some regulation...

There ought to be some regulation with respect to the spirit of denunciation that now prevails. If every individual is to indulge his private malignancy or his private ambition, to denounce at random and without any kind of proof, all confidence will be undermined and all authority be destroyed. Calumny is a species of treachery that ought to be punished as well as any other kind of treachery. It is a private vice productive of public evils; because it is possible to irritate men into disaffection by continual calumny who never intended to be disaffected. It is therefore equally as necessary to guard against the evils of unfounded or malignant suspicion as against the evils of blind confidence. It is equally as necessary to protect the characters of public officers from calumny as it is to punish them for treachery or misconduct.

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Letter to George Jacques Danton
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 3 weeks ago
We hold these truths to be...

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.-That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
6 months ago
Of how much more passion than...

Of how much more passion than reason has Jupiter composed us? putting in, as one would say, "scarce half an ounce to a pound."

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
6 months 1 week ago
"For I am holy." When I...

"For I am holy." When I hear these words I recognize the voice of the Saviour. But shall I take away my own? Certainly when He speaks thus He speaks in inseparable union with His body. But can I say, "I am holy"? If I mean a holiness that I have not received, I should be proud and a liar; but if I mean a holiness that I have received - as it is written: "Be ye holy because I the Lord your God am holy" (Lev. 19:2) - then let the body of Christ say these words. And let this one man, who cries from the ends of the earth, say with his Head and united with his Head: "I am holy." … That is not foolish pride, but an expression of gratitude. If you were to say that you are holy of yourselves, that would be pride; but if, as one of Christ's faithful and as a member of Christ, you say that you are not holy, you are ungrateful.

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p.428
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 3 weeks ago
The world is his, who has...

The world is his, who has money to go over it.

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Wealth
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 3 weeks ago
One will rarely err if extreme...
One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.
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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 3 weeks ago
The more exquisite any good is,...

The more exquisite any good is, of which a small specimen is afforded us, the sharper is the evil, allied to it; and few exceptions are found to this uniform law of nature. The most sprightly wit borders on madness; the highest effusions of joy produce the deepest melancholy; the most ravishing pleasures are attended with the most cruel lassitude and disgust; the most flattering hopes make way for the severest disappointments. And, in general, no course of life has such safety (for happiness is not to be dreamed of) as the temperate and moderate, which maintains, as far as possible, a mediocrity, and a kind of insensibility, in every thing. As the good, the great, the sublime, the ravishing are found eminently in the genuine principles of theism; it may be expected, from the analogy of nature, that the base, the absurd, the mean, the terrifying will be equally discovered in religious fictions and chimeras.

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Part XV - General corollary
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 2 weeks ago
In its most general form, confinement...

In its most general form, confinement was explained, or at least justified, by a will to avoid scandal. It thereby signalled an important change in the consciousness of evil. The Renaissance had let unreason in all its forms come out into the light of day, as public exposure gave evil the chance to redeem itself and to serve as an exemplum.

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Part One: 5. The Insane
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
5 months 3 weeks ago
That man should think of God...

That man should think of God as nothingness must at first sight seem astonishing, must appear to us a most peculiar idea. But, considered more closely, this determination means that God is absolutely nothing determined. He is the Undetermined; no determinateness of any kind pertains to God; He is the Infinite. This is equivalent to saying that God is the negation of all particularity.

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Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with a work on the proofs of the existence of God. Vol 2 Translated from the 2d German ed. 1895 Ebenezer Brown Speirs 1854-1900, and J Burdon Sanderson p. 51
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 2 weeks ago
Many the lumps of frankincense on...

Many the lumps of frankincense on the same altar; one falls there early and another late, but it makes no difference.

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IV, 15
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 4 weeks ago
We are brought to a belief...

We are brought to a belief of God either by reason or by force. Atheism being a proposition as unnatural as monstrous, difficult also and hard to establish in the human understanding, how arrogant soever, there are men enough seen, out of vanity and pride, to be the authors of extraordinary and reforming opinions, and outwardly to affect the profession of them; who, if they are such fools, have, nevertheless, not the power to plant them in their own conscience. Yet will they not fail to lift up their hands towards heaven if you give them a good thrust with a sword in the breast, and when fear or sickness has abated and dulled the licentious fury of this giddy humour they will easily re-unite, and very discreetly suffer themselves to be reconciled to the public faith and examples.

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Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
2 months 1 week ago
Sixty years ago I knew everything....

Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

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Quoted in "Teachers: The Essence of the Centuries", Time magazine, 13 August 1965
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
4 months 2 weeks ago
Nature must not win the game,...

Nature must not win the game, but she cannot lose. And whenever the conscious mind clings to hard and fast concepts and gets caught in its own rules and regulations-as is unavoidable and of the essence of civilized consciousness-nature pops up with her inescapable demands.

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Alchemical Studies
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 1 week ago
The Public is an old woman....

The Public is an old woman. Let her maunder and mumble.

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Journal (1835).
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
1 month 2 weeks ago
Every nation gets the government it...

Every nation gets the government it deserves.

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Original text:Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite. Letter 76, on the topic of Russia's new constitutional laws (27 August 1811); published in Lettres et Opuscules.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 months 3 weeks ago
But one no longer wonders when...

But one no longer wonders when one realizes that in the higher classes there is an unerring instinct of what tends to maintain and of what tends to destroy the organization by virtue of which they enjoy their privileges. The fashionable lady had certainly not reasoned out that if there were no capitalists and no army to defend them, her husband would have no fortune, and she could not have her entertainments and her ball-dresses. And the artist certainly does not argue that he needs the capitalists and the troops to defend them, so that they may buy his pictures. But instinct, replacing reason in this instance, guides them unerringly. And it is precisely this instinct which leads all men, with few exceptions, to support all the religious, political, and economic institutions which are to their advantage.

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Chapter XII, Conclusion-Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
4 months ago
In Administrative Behavior, bounded rationality is...

In Administrative Behavior, bounded rationality is largely characterized as a residual category - rationality is bounded when it falls short of omniscience. And the failures of omniscience are largely failures of knowing all the alternatives, uncertainty about relevant exogenous events, and inability to calculate consequences. There was needed a more positive and formal characterization of the mechanisms of choice under conditions of bounded rationality... Two concepts are central to the characterization: search and satisficing.

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p. 502; As cited in Barros (2010, p. 464-5).
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
4 months 1 week ago
The blessing that the market does...

The blessing that the market does not ask about birth is paid for in the exchange society by the fact that the possibilities conferred by birth are molded to fit the production of goods that can be bought on the market.

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E. Jephcott, trans., p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 3 weeks ago
For nature beats in perfect tune,...

For nature beats in perfect tune, And rounds with rhyme her every rune, Whether she work in land or sea, Or hide underground her alchemy. Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.

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Wood-notes, no. II, st. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
3 months 3 weeks ago
Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy...

Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy an opportunity to go crazy in a way he finds irresistible.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
4 months 4 days ago
It is characteristic of theistic "tolerance"...

It is characteristic of theistic "tolerance" that no one really cares what the people believe in, just so they believe or pretend to believe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
4 months 2 weeks ago
Big industry, and the limitless expansion...

Big industry, and the limitless expansion of production which it makes possible, bring within the range of feasibility a social order in which so much is produced that every member of society will be in a position to exercise and develop all his powers and faculties in complete freedom. It thus appears that the very qualities of big industry which, in our present-day society, produce misery and crises are those which, in a different form of society, will abolish this misery and these catastrophic depressions.We see with the greatest clarity: (i) That all these evils are from now on to be ascribed solely to a social order which no longer corresponds to the requirements of the real situation; and (ii) That it is possible, through a new social order, to do away with these evils altogether.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 3 weeks ago
I see that sensible men and...

I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion.

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The Preacher
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
4 months 3 weeks ago
Well, which is the most rational...

Well, which is the most rational theory about these ten millions of species? Is it most likely that there have been ten millions of special creations? or is it most likely that, by continual modifications due to change of circumstances, ten millions of varieties have been produced, as varieties are being produced still?

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 3 weeks ago
The Sophist demonstrates that everything is...

The Sophist demonstrates that everything is true and nothing is true.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 2 weeks ago
This heaven will pass away, and...

This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away. The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. In the days when you consumed what is dead, you made it what is alive. When you come to dwell in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were one you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 2 weeks ago
His power to adore is responsible...

His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 3 weeks ago
Suicide may also be regarded as...

Suicide may also be regarded as an experiment - a question which man puts to Nature, trying to force her to answer. The question is this: What change will death produce in a man's existence and in his insight into the nature of things? It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 13, § 160
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
6 months 3 weeks ago
How will one part of the...

How will one part of the infinite be above, and another below? Or how will it have extremes or a middle? Further still, every sensible body is in place; but the species and differences of place are upward and downward, before and behind, to the right hand and to the left: and these things not only thus subsist with relation to us, and by position, but have a definite subsistence in the universe itself. But it is impossible that these things should be in the infinite: and... that there should be an infinite place. But every body is in place; and therefore it is also impossible that there should be an infinite body. ...Therefore ...there is not an infinite body in energy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 4 weeks ago
Confidence in another man's virtue is...

Confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.

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Book I, Ch. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 2 weeks ago
In theory, it matters little to...

In theory, it matters little to me whether I live as whether I die; in practice, I am lacerated by every anxiety which opens an abyss between life and death.

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
4 months 1 week ago
That Marxism should triumph in Russia,...

That Marxism should triumph in Russia, where there is no industry, would be the greatest contradiction that Marxism could undergo. But there is no such contradiction, for there is no such triumph. Russia is Marxist more or less as the Germans of the Holy Roman Empire were Romans.

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Chapter XIV: Who Rules The World?
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 3 days ago
Time is the image....
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Main Content / General
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
5 months 2 weeks ago
From our human experience and history,...

From our human experience and history, at least as far as I am informed, I know that everything essential and great has only emerged when human beings had a home and were rooted in a tradition. Today's literature is, for instance, largely destructive.

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Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
1 month 3 weeks ago
What one has to say to...

What one has to say to begin with is that, as humans, we are limited in intelligence and we really have no reliable foresight. So none of us will come up with answers to the whole great problem. What we can do is judge our behavior, our history, and our present situation by a better standard than "efficiency" or "profit," or those measures that we're still using to determine economic decisions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel
2 months 1 day ago
Objectivity may also be defined as...

Objectivity may also be defined as freedom: the objective individual is bound by no commitments which could prejudice his perception, understanding, and evaluation of the given.

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p. 403
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
4 months 3 weeks ago
A Dialogue between two Infants in...

A Dialogue between two Infants in the womb concerning the state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in Plato's Den, and are but Embryon Philosophers.

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Chapter IV
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
4 months 4 days ago
Witness the tragic condition of Russia....

Witness the tragic condition of Russia. The methods of State centralization have paralysed individual initiative and effort; the tyranny of the dictatorship has cowed the people into slavish submission and all but extinguished the fires of liberty; organized terrorism has depraved and brutalized the masses and stifled every idealistic aspiration; institutionalized murder has cheapened human life, and all sense of the dignity of man and the value of life has been eliminated; coercion at every step has made effort bitter, labour a punishment, has turned the whole of existence into a scheme of mutual deceit, and has revived the lowest and most brutal instincts of man. A sorry heritage to begin a new life of freedom and brotherhood.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
5 months 1 week ago
Man is a universe in little...

Man is a universe in little.

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Freeman (1948), p. 150
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
5 months 2 weeks ago
Diversity makes critical argument fruitful. ...[P]artners...

Diversity makes critical argument fruitful. ...[P]artners in an argument must share ...the wish to know, and the readiness to learn from the other ...by severely criticizing his views... and hearing... [the] reply. ...the so-called method of science consists in this kind of criticism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
3 months 2 weeks ago
Why is it after a century...

Why is it after a century of socialist disasters, and an intellectual legacy that has been time and again exploded, the left-wing position remains, as it were, the default position to which thinking people gravitate when called upon for a comprehensive philosophy? Why are "right-wingers" marginalised in the educational system, denounced in the media and regarded by our political class as untouchable, fit only to clean up after the orgies of luxurious nonsense indulged in by their moral superiors?

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 3 weeks ago
I do not, therefore, need any...

I do not, therefore, need any penetrating acuteness to see what I have to do in order that my volition be morally good. Inexperienced in the course of the world, incapable of being prepared for whatever might come to pass in it, I ask myself only: can you also will that your maxim become a universal law?

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
4 months 4 days ago
What can characterize the Outsider is...

What can characterize the Outsider is a sense of strangeness, or unreality.

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Chapter one, The Country of the Blind
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
6 months 6 days ago
If any one will piously and...

If any one will piously and soberly consider the sermon which our Lord Jesus spoke on the mount, as we read it in the Gospel according to Matthew, I think that he will find in it, so far as regards the highest morals, a perfect standard of the Christian life: and this we do not rashly venture to promise, but gather it from the very words of the Lord Himself. For the sermon itself is brought to a close in such a way, that it is clear there are in it all the precepts which go to mould the life. He has sufficiently indicated, as I think, that these sayings which He uttered on the mount so perfectly guide the life of those who may be willing to live according to them, that they may justly be compared to one building upon a rock.

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On the Sermon on the Mount, as translated by William Findlay (1888), Book I, Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 3 weeks ago
Be not afraid of life. Believe...

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

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"Is Life Worth Living?"
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
4 months 3 days ago
Why have women passion, intellect, moral...

Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity - these three - and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised? Men say that God punishes for complaining. No, but men are angry with misery. They are irritated with women for not being happy. They take it as a personal offence. To God alone may women complain without insulting Him!

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4 months 3 weeks ago
Yes, I dreamed a dream, my...

Yes, I dreamed a dream, my dream of the third of November. They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth? If once one has recognized the truth and seen it, you know that it is the truth and that there is no other and there cannot be, whether you are asleep or awake. Let it be a dream, so be it, but that real life of which you make so much I had meant to extinguish by suicide, and my dream, my dream - oh, it revealed to me a different life, renewed, grand and full of power!

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Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
1 month 4 weeks ago
I distrust all dead and mechanical...

I distrust all dead and mechanical formulas for expressing anything connected with human affairs and human personalities. Putting human affairs in exact formulas shows in itself a lack of the sense of humor and therefore a lack of wisdom.

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Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl
2 months 1 day ago
We now come to a decisive...

We now come to a decisive step of mathematical abstraction: we forget about what the symbols stand for... [The mathematician] need not be idle; there are many operations which he may carry out with these symbols, without ever having to look at the things they stand for.

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The Mathematical Way of Thinking
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 3 weeks ago
Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge gained...

Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from concepts; mathematical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from the construction of concepts.

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A 713, B 741
Philosophical Maxims
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