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Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 4 weeks ago
A nihilist is not one who...

A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing, but one who does not believe in what exists.

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Philosophical Maxims
Avicenna
Avicenna
6 months 2 weeks ago
The knowledge of anything, since all...

The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes. Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health. And because health and sickness and their causes are sometimes manifest, and sometimes hidden and not to be comprehended except by the study of symptoms, we must also study the symptoms of health and disease. Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials. Of these causes there are four kinds: material, efficient, formal, and final.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
6 months 1 day ago
I will not be modest. Humble,...

I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.

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Act 4, sc. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
2 months 2 days ago
Ask the questions that have no...

Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millenium.

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Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front in Farming: A Hand Book
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
4 months 3 weeks ago
A word is a bud attempting...

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

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Introduction, sect. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
5 months 2 days ago
Evolution is definable as a change...

Evolution is definable as a change from an incoherent homogeneity to a coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter.

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Pt. II, The Knowable; Ch. XV, The Law of Evolution (continued)
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
4 months 1 week ago
The first consequence of the principle...

The first consequence of the principle of bounded rationality is that the intended rationality of an actor requires him to construct a simplified model of the real situation in order to deal with it. He behaves rationally with respect to this model, and such behavior is not even approximately optimal with respect to the real world. To predict his behavior we must understand the way in which this simplified model is constructed, and its construction will certainly be related to his psychological properties as a perceiving, thinking, and learning animal.

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p. 198; Cited in P. Slovic (1972, p. 2).
Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
6 months 5 days ago
Figure to yourself the mixture of...

Figure to yourself the mixture of surprise and delight which has this instant been poured into my mind by the sound of my name, as uttered by you, in the speech just read to me out of the Morning Herald... By one and the same man, not only Parliamentary Reform, but Law Reform advocated. Advocated? and by what man? By one who, in the vulgar sense of profit and loss, has nothing to gain by it... Yes, only from Ireland could such self-sacrifice come; nowhere else: least of all in England, cold, selfish, priest-ridden, lawyer-ridden, lord-ridden, squire-ridden, soldier-ridden England, could any approach to it be found.

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Letter to Daniel O'Connell (15 July 1828) , quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. X (1843), pp. 594-595
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
5 months 1 week ago
To attempt the destruction of our...

To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!

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Ch. 5, as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
7 months 3 days ago
The immediacy of falling in love...

The immediacy of falling in love recognizes but one immediacy that is ebenburtig (of equal standing), and this is a religious immediacy; falling in love is too virginal to recognize any confidant other than God. But the religious is a new immediacy, has reflection in between-otherwise, paganism would actually be religious and Christianity not. That the religious is a new immediacy every person easily understands who is satisfied with following the honest path of ordinary common sense. And although I imagine I have but few readers, I confess nevertheless that I do imagine my readers to be among these, since I am far from wanting to instruct the admired ones, who make systematic discoveries a la Niels Klim, who have left their good skin in order to put on the “real appearance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
6 months 4 days ago
My body and my will are...

My body and my will are one.

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Book 1
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
6 months 4 days ago
National character is only another name...

National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right. Variant translation: Every nation criticizes every other one - and they are all correct.

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As quoted by Wolfgang Pauli in a letter to Abraham Pais (17 August 1950) published in The Genius of Science (2000) by Abraham Pais, p. 242
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 1 week ago
The only good histories are those...

The only good histories are those that have been written by the persons themselves who commanded in the affairs whereof they write.

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Book II, Ch. 10. Of Books
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
3 months 2 weeks ago
Nature shrinks as capital grows. The...

Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates.

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Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
4 months 5 days ago
Those who used to sacrifice animals...

Those who used to sacrifice animals did not take them for beasts. And even the Middle Ages, which condemned and punished them in due form, was in this way much closer to them than we are, we who are filled with horror at this practice. They held them to be guilty: which was a way of honoring them. We take them for nothing, and it is on this basis that we are "human" with them. We no longer sacrifice them, we no longer punish them, and we are proud of it, but it is simply that we have domesticated them, worse: that we have made of them a racially inferior world, no longer even worthy of our justice, but only of our affection and social charity, no longer worthy of punishment and of death, but only of experimentation and extermination like meat from the butchery.

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"The Animals: Territory and Metamorphoses," pp. 134-135
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
6 months 5 days ago
This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power,...

This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man's preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together: for a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life, when he pleases.

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Second Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. IV, sec. 23
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
6 months 5 days ago
The end of law is not...

The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom.

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Second Treatise of Government, Ch. VI, sec. 57
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 weeks ago
Much has been said of Mahomet's...

Much has been said of Mahomet's propagating his Religion by the sword. It is no doubt far nobler what we have to boast of the Christian Religion, that it propagated itself peaceably in the way of preaching and conviction. Yet withal, if we take this for an argument of the truth or falsehood of a religion, there is a radical mistake in it. The sword indeed: but where will you get your sword! Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. In one man's head alone, there it dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it; there is one man against all men. That he take a sword, and try to propagate with that, will do little for him. You must first get your sword! On the whole, a thing will propagate itself as it can. We do not find, of the Christian Religion either, that it always disdained the sword, when once it had got one.

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
6 months 2 weeks ago
Rules for Demonstrations. I. Not to...

Rules for Demonstrations. I. Not to undertake to demonstrate any thing that is so evident of itself that nothing can be given that is clearer to prove it. II. To prove all propositions at all obscure, and to employ in their proof only very evident maxims or propositions already admitted or demonstrated. III. To always mentally substitute definitions in the place of things defined, in order not to be misled by the ambiguity of terms which have been restricted by definitions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 4 weeks ago
Retire into thyself. The rational principle...

Retire into thyself. The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquility.

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VII, 28
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 months 4 weeks ago
Moral philosophers say things like, 'What...

Moral philosophers say things like, 'What is actually wrong with cannibalism?' There are two ways of responding to that: one is to shrink back in horror and say, 'Cannibalism! Cannibalism! We can't talk about cannibalism!' The other is to say, 'Well, actually, what is wrong with cannibalism?' Then you work it out and you tease it out and you decide yes, actually, cannibalism is wrong, but for the following reasons. So I'd like to think that my moral values at least partly come from reasoning. Trying to suppress the gut reaction as much as possible.

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Interview with Sophie Elmhirst (2015),
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 months 3 weeks ago
Oh! wherefore come ye forth, in...

Oh! wherefore come ye forth, in triumph from the North,With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red? And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout? And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread?

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The Battle of Naseby (1824), quoted in The Works of Lord Macaulay Complete, Vol. VIII, ed. Lady Trevelyan (1866), p. 551
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
4 months ago
Mass man is a phenomenon of...

Mass man is a phenomenon of electric speed, not of physical quantity.

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Access, Issues 165-176, National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting, 1984, p. xxiii
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
5 months 1 week ago
Justice is the end of government....

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be, pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.

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Chapter XV.
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
2 months 1 week ago
The Phoenicians who from their sagacity...

The Phoenicians who from their sagacity and learning possess great insight into things divine, hold the doctrine that this universally diffused radiance is a part of the "Soul of the Stars." This opinion is consistent with sound reason: if we consider the light that is without body, we shall perceive that of such light the source cannot be a body, but rather the simple action of a mind, which spreads itself by means of illumination as far as its proper seat; to which the middle region of the heavens is contiguous, from which place it shines forth with all its vigour and fills the heavenly orbs, illuminating at the same time the whole universe with its divine and pure radiance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
6 months 1 day ago
Real power begins where secrecy begins....

Real power begins where secrecy begins.

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Part 3, Ch. 12, § 1
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
5 months 3 weeks ago
At the end of Being and...

At the end of Being and Nothingness, ... Being in-itself and Being for-itself were of Being; and this totality of beings, in which they were effected, itself was linked up to itself, relating and appearing to itself, by means of the essential project of human-reality. What was named in this way, in an allegedly neutral and undetermined way, was nothing other than the metaphysical unity of man and God, the relation of man to God, the project of becoming God as the project constituting human-reality. Atheism changes nothing in this fundamental structure.

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Chicago, 1982. (original French published in Paris, 1972, as Marges de la philosophie). p. 116
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
4 months 1 week ago
I think part of the appeal…

I think part of the appeal of mathematical logic is that the formulas look mysterious - you write backward Es!

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Putnam as quoted in: Julian Baggini, Jeremy Stangroom (2005) What Philosophers Think. p. 233
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
6 months 3 days ago
If you would convince a man...

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see.

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Let them see. Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 222
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
2 months 1 week ago
It is not because the truth...

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. It may even lie on the surface; but we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.

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Peace and Violence
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
3 months 3 weeks ago
For the first time in history,...

For the first time in history, the human species as a whole has gone into politics. Everyone is in the act, and there is no telling what may come of it.

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To Jerusalem and Back: A Personal Account (1976), p. 38
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 3 days ago
I cannot believe - and I...

I cannot believe - and I say this with all the emphasis of which I am capable - that there can ever be any good excuse for refusing to face the evidence in favour of something unwelcome. It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.

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"The Pursuit of Truth" in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, 1993
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 4 weeks ago
The terrifying experience and obsession of...

The terrifying experience and obsession of death, when preserved in consciousness, becomes ruinous. If you talk about death, you save part of yourself. But at the same time, something of your real self dies, because objectified meanings lose the actuality they have in consciousness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
5 months ago
A character is a completely fashioned...

A character is a completely fashioned will.

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(vollkommen gebildeter Wille).
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 4 weeks ago
To have time was at once...

To have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
4 months 2 weeks ago
It is a conceded fact that...

It is a conceded fact that woman is being reared as a sex commodity, and yet she is kept in absolute ignorance of the meaning and importance of sex.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 4 weeks ago
Find time still to be learning...

Find time still to be learning somewhat good, and give up being desultory.

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Meditations. ii. 7.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
6 months 1 day ago
Those who promise us paradise on...

Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.

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As quoted in In Passing: Condolences and Complaints on Death, Dying, and Related Disappointments (2005) by Jon Winokur, p. 144
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 2 weeks ago
In order to be exercised, the...

In order to be exercised, the intelligence requires to be free to express itself without control by any authority. There must therefore be a domain of pure intellectual research, separate but accessible to all, where no authority intervenes. The human soul has need of some solitude and privacy and also of some social life.The human soul has need of both personal property and collective property.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
6 months 3 days ago
I trust that some may be...

I trust that some may be as near and dear to Buddha, or Christ, or Swedenborg, who are without the pale of their churches. It is necessary not to be Christian to appreciate the beauty and significance of the life of Christ. I know that some will have hard thoughts of me, when they hear their Christ named beside my Buddha, yet I am sure that I am willing they should love their Christ more than my Buddha, for the love is the main thing, and I like him too.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 3 days ago
Prejudice is of ready application in...

Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 4 weeks ago
This heart within me I can...

This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers. I can sketch one by one all the aspects it is able to assume, all those likewise that have been attributed to it, this upbringing, this origin, this ardor or these silences, this nobility or this vileness. But aspects cannot be added up. This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 months 3 weeks ago
If the room...
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Main Content / General
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
4 months 2 weeks ago
What is patriotism? Is it love...

What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naïveté, we would watch the passing clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not float so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our little souls?

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 2 days ago
When we get piled upon one...

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe.

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Letter to James Madison (20 December 1787), The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (19 Vols., 1905) edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. VI, p. 392.
Philosophical Maxims
Sir Thomas Browne
Sir Thomas Browne
5 months 1 week ago
To ruminate upon evils, to make...

To ruminate upon evils, to make critical notes upon injuries, and be too acute in their apprehensions, is to add unto our own tortures, to feather the arrows of our enemies, to lash ourselves with the scorpions of our foes, and to resolve to sleep no more.

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Part III, Section XII
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
5 months 3 weeks ago
We assume that our own advances...

We assume that our own advances in objectivity are steps along a path that extends beyond them and beyond all our capacities. But even allowing unlimited time, or an unlimited number of generations, to take as many successive steps as we like, the process can never be completed. ... What is wanted is some way of making the most objective standpoint the basis of action.

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pp. 128-129.
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 2 weeks ago
To believe in God is to...

To believe in God is to long for His existence and, further, it is to act as if he existed; it is to live by this longing and to make it the inner spring of our action. This longing or hunger for divinity begets hope, hope begets faith, and faith and hope beget charity. Of this divine longing is born our sense of beauty, of finality, of goodness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 3 days ago
There is a connected set of...

There is a connected set of events (light-waves) travelling outward from a centre... there are some respects in which all events are alike, and others in which they differ... We must not think of a light-wave as a 'thing', but as a connected group of rhythmical events. The mathematical characteristics of such a group can be inferred by physics, but the intrinsic character of the component events cannot be inferred.

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An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics, 1927
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 4 weeks ago
Whatsoever any man either doth or...

Whatsoever any man either doth or saith, thou must be good; not for any man's sake, but for thine own nature's sake; as if either gold, or the emerald, or purple, should ever be saying to themselves, Whatsoever any man either doth or saith, I must still be an emerald, and I must keep my colour.

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VII, 12
Philosophical Maxims
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