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Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 week 1 day ago
The child shows its individual tendencies...

The child shows its individual tendencies in its plays, in its questions, in its association with people and things. But it has to struggle with everlasting external interference in its world of thought and emotion. It must not express itself in harmony with its nature, with its growing personality. It must become a thing, an object. Its questions are met with narrow, conventional, ridiculous replies, mostly based on falsehoods; and, when, with large, wondering, innocent eyes, it wishes to behold the wonders of the world, those about it quickly lock the windows and doors, and keep the delicate human plant in a hothouse atmosphere, where it can neither breathe nor grow freely.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 3 weeks ago
A purely disembodied human emotion is...

A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.

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Ch. 25
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
1 month 4 weeks ago
This is that which I think...

This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in; those who have read of everything, are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections ; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.

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As quoted in "Hand Book : Caution and Counsels" in The Common School Journal Vol. 5, No. 24 (15 December 1843) by Horace Mann, p. 371
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months ago
A man must be perfectly crazy...

A man must be perfectly crazy who, where there is tolerable security, does not employ all the stock which he commands…

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Chapter I, p. 313 (see opportunity cost).
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 weeks 4 days ago
O ye of little faith, why...

O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have brought no bread? Do ye not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees?

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16:8-11 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
4 days ago
Economic man deals with the "real...

Economic man deals with the "real world" in all its complexity. Administrative man recognizes that the world he perceives is a drastic simplified model... He makes his choices using a simple picture of the situation that takes into account just a few of the factors that he regards as most relevant and crucial.

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p. xxix; As cited in: Jesper Simonsen (1994) Administrative Behavior: How Organizations can be Understood in Terms of Decision Processes. Roskilde Universitet.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 weeks 4 days ago
In the state of nature…

In the state of nature, Profit is the measure of Right.

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De Cive
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 week 1 day ago
The contention that a standing army...

The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 weeks 5 days ago
Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind...

Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.

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Book II, ch. 4 (trans. Constance Garnett) The Elder Zossima, speaking to Mrs. Khoklakov
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 weeks 4 days ago
Is this fight against history part...

Is this fight against history part of the fight against a dimension of the mind in which centrifugal faculties and forces might develop-faculties and forces that might hinder the total coordination of the individual with the society? Remembrance of the Fast may give rise to dangerous insights, and the established society seems to be apprehensive of the subversive contents of memory. Remembrance is a mode of dissociation from the given facts, a mode of "mediation" which breaks, for short moments, the omnipresent power of the given facts. Memory recalls the terror and the hope that passed. Both come to life again.

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p. 98
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
2 months 1 week ago
Everything has two handles, the one...

Everything has two handles, the one by which it may be carried, the other by which it cannot. If your brother acts unjustly, don't lay hold on the action by the handle of his injustice, for by that it cannot be carried; but by the opposite, that he is your brother, that he was brought up with you; and thus you will lay hold on it, as it is to be carried.

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(43).
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Even before the bomb, one did...

Even before the bomb, one did not breathe too easily in this tortured world. Now we are given a new source of anguish; it has all the promise of being our greatest anguish ever. There can be no doubt that humanity is being offered its last chance. Perhaps this is an occasion for the newspapers to print a special edition. More likely, it should be cause for a certain amount of reflection and a great deal of silence.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 3 weeks ago
He blamed as severely what he...

He blamed as severely what he thought a bad action, when the motive was a feeling of duty, as if the agents had been consciously evil doers. He would not have accepted as a plea in mitigation for inquisitors, that they sincerely believed burning heretics to be an obligation of conscience. But though he did not allow honesty of purpose to soften his disapprobation of actions, it had its full effect on his estimation of characters. No one prized conscientiousness and rectitude of intention more highly, or was more incapable of valuing any person in whom he did not feel assurance of it.

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(pp. 49-50)
Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
5 days ago
It is at work everywhere, functioning...

It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id. Everywhere it is machines - real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections. from Anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia,

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p. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking
3 days ago
Statistics began as the systematic study...

Statistics began as the systematic study of quantitative facts about the state.

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Chapter 12, Political Arithmetic, p. 102.
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 week 1 day ago
Every daring attempt to make a...

Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labelled Utopian.

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"Socialism: Caught in the Political Trap", a lecture (c. 1912), published in Red Emma Speaks, Part 1 (1972) edited by Alix Kates Shulman
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
1 month 3 weeks ago
First of all, no one knows...

First of all, no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like. Nor, again, does anyone know his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special features of psychology such as his aversion to risk or liability to optimism or pessimism. More than this, I assume that the parties do not know the particular circumstances of their own society. That is, they do not know its particular economic or political situation, or the level of civilization and culture it has been able to achieve. The persons in the original position have no information as to which generation they belong.

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p. 117
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 days ago
Advancing bourgeois society...
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Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
2 weeks 3 days ago
Serious reflexion about one's own character...

Serious reflexion about one's own character will often induce a curious sense of emptiness; and if one knows another person well, one may sometimes intuit a similar void in him. (This is one of the strange privileges of friendship.)

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Ch. 8, p. 119
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 3 weeks ago
Any fool can make a ruleAnd...

Any fool can make a ruleAnd every fool will mind it.

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February 3, 1860
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 weeks 5 days ago
As there must be moderation in...

As there must be moderation in other things, so there must be moderation in self-criticism. Perpetual contemplation of our own actions produces a morbid consciousness, quite unlike that normal consciousness accompanying right actions spontaneously done; and from a state of unstable equilibrium long maintained by effort, there is apt to be a fall towards stable equilibrium, in which the primitive nature reasserts itself. Retrogression rather than progression may hence result.

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Ch. 10, General Conclusions
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 3 weeks ago
The pivot round which the religious...

The pivot round which the religious life... revolves, is the interest of the individual in his private personal destiny. Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism. The gods believed in-whether by crude savages or by men disciplined intellectually-agree with each other in recognizing personal calls. Religious thought is carried on in terms of personality, this being, in the world of religion, the one fundamental fact. To-day, quite as much as at any previous age, the religious individual tells you that the divine meets him on the basis of his personal concerns.

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Lecture XX, "Conclusions"
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 weeks 5 days ago
The supporters of the Development Hypothesis......

The supporters of the Development Hypothesis... can show that any existing species-animal or vegetable-when placed under conditions different from its previous ones, immediately begins to undergo certain changes fitting it for the new conditions. They can show that in successive generations these changes continue; until, ultimately, the new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in cultivated plants, in domesticated animals, and in the several races of men, such alterations have taken place. They can show that the degrees of difference so produced are often, as in dogs, greater than those on which distinctions of species are in other cases founded.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
1 month 3 weeks ago
Form displays the relation...

Form displays the relation itself as the state of original comportment toward beings, the festive state in which the being itself in its essence is celebrated and thus for the first time placed in the open.

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p. 119
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 4 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
Jesus
Jesus
2 weeks 4 days ago
Suffer little children, and forbid them...

Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

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19:14 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is so hard to forget...

It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.

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p. 492
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
1 month 2 weeks ago
Once a word….

Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.

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Book I, epistle xviii, line 71
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 3 weeks ago
I did not know the way...

I did not know the way in which, among the ordinary English, the absence of interest in things of an unselfish kind, except occasionally in a special thing here and there, and the habit of not speaking to others, nor much even to themselves, about the things in which they do feel interest, causes both their feelings and their intellectual faculties to remain undeveloped, or to develope themselves only in some single and very limited direction; reducing them, considered as spiritual beings, to a kind of negative existence.

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(p. 59)
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
1 month 3 weeks ago
Who lives longer? the man who...

Who lives longer? the man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or a man who lives on roast beef, water and potatoes 'till 95? One passes his 24 months in eternity. All the years of the beefeater are lived only in time.

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The Shortcut: 20 Stories To Get You From Here To There (2006) by Kevin A Fabiano, p. 179
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months ago
The heroes in paganism correspond exactly...

The heroes in paganism correspond exactly to the saints in popery, and holy dervises in MAHOMETANISM. The place of, HERCULES, THESEUS, HECTOR, ROMULUS, is now supplied by DOMINIC, FRANCIS, ANTHONY, and BENEDICT. Instead of the destruction of monsters, the subduing of tyrants, the defence of our native country; whippings and fastings, cowardice and humility, abject submission and slavish obedience, are become the means of obtaining celestial honours among mankind.

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Part X - With regard to courage or abasement
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 weeks 3 days ago
Were art to redeem man, it...

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness. The symbol of art is seen again in the magic flute of the Great God Pan which makes the young goats frisk at the edge of the grove. All modern art begins to appear comprehensible and in a way great when it is interpreted as an attempt to instill youthfulness into an ancient world.

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"Art a Thing of No Consequence"
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 4 days ago
For the history of the centuries...

For the history of the centuries that have passed since the birth of Christ nowhere reveals conditions like those of the present. There has never been such building and planting in the world. There has never been such gluttonous and varied eating and drinking as now. Wearing apparel has reached its limit in costliness. Who has ever heard of such commerce as now encircles the earth? There have arisen all kinds of art and sculpture, embroidery and engraving, the like of which has not been seen during the whole Christian era. In addition men are so delving into the mysteries of things that today a boy of twenty knows more than twenty doctors formerly knew.

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Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent, Luke 21:25-36 (1522), as translated in The Precious and Sacred Writings of Martin Luther (1905) edited by John Nicholas Lenker
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 week 3 days ago
The study of mathematics is apt...

The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.

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ch. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
1 month 1 week ago
He made one of Antipater's recommendation...

He made one of Antipater's recommendation a judge; and perceiving afterwards that his hair and beard were coloured, he removed him, saying, "I could not think one that was faithless in his hair could be trusty in his deeds."

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40 Philip
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
1 week 6 days ago
Of all kind of authors there...

Of all kind of authors there are none I despise more than compilers, who search every where for shreds of other men's works, which they join to their own, like so many pieces of green turf in a garden: they are not at all superior to compositors in a printing house, who range the types, which, collected together, make a book, towards which they contribute nothing but the labours of the hand. I would have original writers respected, and it seems to me a kind of profanation to take those pieces from the sanctuary in which they reside, and to expose them to a contempt they do not deserve. When a man hath nothing new to say, why does not he hold his tongue? What business have we with this double employment?"

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No. 66.
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 3 weeks ago
The entire history of social improvement...

The entire history of social improvement has been a series of transitions, by which one custom or institution after another, from being a supposed primary necessity of social existence, has passed into the rank of an universally stigmatized injustice and tyranny. So it has been with the distinctions of slaves and freemen, nobles and serfs, patricians and plebeians; and so it will be, and in part already is, with the aristocracies of colour, race, and sex.

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Ch. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 3 weeks ago
If life becomes hard to bear...

If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.

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p. 53e
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 3 weeks ago
I pre-suppose, of course, a reader...

I pre-suppose, of course, a reader who is willing to learn something new and therefore to think for himself.

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Author's prefaces to the First Edition.
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
3 weeks 2 days ago
Taught from their infancy that beauty...

Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

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Ch. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 weeks 5 days ago
The acts of France were acts...

The acts of France were acts of hostility to this country; her whole system, every speech, every decree, every act, bespoke an intention preclusive of accommodation. No man, he would venture to say, had a more lively sense of the importance of the question before the House, or of the evils of war, than himself. A war with France, under such circumstances as now governed her conduct, must be terrible, but peace much more so. A nation that had abandoned all its valuable distinctions, arts, sciences, religion, law order, every thing but the sword, was most formidable and dreadful to all nations composed of citizens who only used soldiers as a defence; as such, France should be resisted with spirit and temper, without fear or scruple.

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Speech in the House of Commons upon the outbreak of war with France (12 February 1793)
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 weeks 1 day ago
Second, by this and other means...

Second, by this and other means we are driven to perceive, what is quite evident in itself, that instantaneous feelings flow together in a continuum of feeling, which has in a modified degree the peculiar vivacity of feeling and has gained generality. And in reference to such general ideas, or continua of feeling, the difficulties about resemblance and suggestion and reference to the external, cease to have any force.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
2 months 1 week ago
A thing therefore…

A thing therefore never returns to nothing.

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Book I, line 248 (tr. Munro)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
Most people would sooner die than...

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 weeks 4 days ago
If you know these things, happy...

If you know these things, happy you are if you do them.

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13:17, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 weeks 4 days ago
And when all the world is...

And when all the world is overcharged with Inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is Warre, which provideth for every man, by Victory or Death.

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The Second Part, Chapter 30, p. 181
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months ago
When the happiness or misery of...

When the happiness or misery of others depends in any respect upon our conduct, we dare not, as self-love might suggest to us, prefer the interest of one to that of many. The man within immediately calls to us, that we value ourselves too much and other people too little, and that, by doing so, we render ourselves the proper object of the contempt and indignation of our brethren. Neither is this sentiment confined to men of extraordinary magnanimity and virtue. It is deeply impressed upon every tolerably good soldier, who feels that he would become the scorn of his companions, if he could be supposed capable of shrinking from danger, or of hesitating, either to expose or to throw away his life, when the good of the service required it.

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Chap. III.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 weeks 5 days ago
Every man is free to do...

Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.

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Ch. 6, The Formula of Justice
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 weeks 5 days ago
He had no failings which were...

He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

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The reference is to Charles Townshend
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
2 weeks 3 days ago
Equally there is no rhythm when...

Equally there is no rhythm when variations are not placed. There is a wealth of suggestions in the phrase "takes place". The change not only comes but it belongs; it had its definite place in a larger whole.

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p. 160
Philosophical Maxims
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