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Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 weeks ago
My friends, I tell you that...

My friends, I tell you that hitherto you have been prevented from even knowing what happiness really is, solely in consequence of the errors - gross errors - that have been combined with the fundamental notions of every religion that has hitherto been taught to men. And, in consequence, they have made man the most inconsistent, and the most miserable being in existence. By the errors of these systems he has been made a weak, imbecile animal; a furious bigot and fanatic or a miserable hypocrite; and should these qualities be carried, not only into the projected villages, but into Paradise itself, a Paradise would no longer be found!

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Statement (21 August 1817), as quoted by Jim Herrick, in "Bradlaugh and Secularism: 'The Province of the Real'"
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
The scientific attitude of mind involves...

The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interests of the desire to know-it involves suppression of hopes and fears, loves and hates, and the whole subjective emotional life, until we become subdued to the material, able to see it frankly, without preconceptions, without bias, without any wish except to see it as it is, and without any belief that what it is must be determined by some relation, positive or negative, to what we should like it to be, or to what we can easily imagine it to be.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month ago
Even truth needs to be clad...

Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.

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C 33
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 3 weeks ago
I shall, without further discussion of...

I shall, without further discussion of the other theories, attempt to contribute something towards the understanding and appreciation of the Utilitarian or Happiness theory, and towards such proof as it is susceptible of. It is evident that this cannot be proof in the ordinary and popular meaning of the term. Questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct proof. Whatever can be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means to something admitted to be good without proof.

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Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
3 days ago
The equation of religion with belief...

The equation of religion with belief is rather recent.

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Christianity Among the Religions of the World (New York: Scribner's, 1957) p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 3 weeks ago
The prejudices of the second species,...

The prejudices of the second species, since they impose upon the intellect by the sensual conditions restricting the mind if it wishes in certain cases to attain to what is intellectual, lurk more deeply. One of them is that which affects knowledge of quantity, the other that affecting knowledge of qualities generally. The former is: every actual multiplicity can be given numerically, and hence, every infinite quantity; the latter, whatever is impossible contradicts itself. In either of them the concept of time, it is true, does not enter into the very notion of the predicate, nor is it attributed as a qualification to the subject. But yet it serves as a means for forming an idea of the predicate, and thus, being a condition, affects the intellectual concept of the subject to the extent that the latter is only attained by its aid.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 week 2 days ago
The conformation of his mind was...

The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little. Serious business was a trifle to him, and trifles were his serious business.

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'Horace Walpole', The Edinburgh Review (October 1833), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. II (1843), p. 99
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
I think of so many people...

I think of so many people who are no more, and I pity them. Yet they are not so much to be pitied, for they have solved every problem, beginning with the problem of death.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 days ago
'Tis a grievous...
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Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 2 weeks ago
My difficulty is only an -...

My difficulty is only an - enormous - difficulty of expression.

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Journal entry (8 March 1915) p. 40
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 3 days ago
Anyone who can understand that the...

Anyone who can understand that the Buddhist idea of Nirvana is not merely negative, and that the Buddha himself who (like the Superman) 'looks down on suffering humanity like a hillsman on the planes' is not an atheistic monster, will instantly see how this misses the point. Nietzsche was not an atheist, any more than the Buddha was. Anyone who reads the Night Song and the Dance Song in Zarathustra will recognize that they spring out of the same emotion as the Vedic or Gathic hymns or the Psalms of David. The idea of the Superman is a response to the need for salvation in precisely the same way that Buddhism was a response to the 'three signs'.

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p. 135
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 6 days ago
You called and cried out loud...

You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 4 days ago
At electric speed, all forms are...

At electric speed, all forms are pushed to the limits of their potential.

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p. 109
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 week 6 days ago
There's something that remains barbarous in...

There's something that remains barbarous in educated people, and lately I've more and more had the feeling that we are nonwondering primitives. And why is it that we no longer marvel at these technological miracles? They've become the external facts of every life. We've all been to the university, we've had introductory courses in everything, and therefore we have persuaded ourselves that if we had the time to apply ourselves to these scientific marvels, we would understand them. But of course that's an illusion. It couldn't happen. Even among people who have had careers in science. They know no more about how it all works than we do. So we are in the position of savage men who, however, have been educated into believing that they are capable of understanding everything. Not that we actually do understand, but that we have the capacity.

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"A Half Life" (1990), pp. 302-303
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
1 month 1 week ago
Being good is just a matter...

Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.

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The Nice and the Good (1968), ch. 14, p. 127. Murdoch attributed this opinion to her character Kate Gray. It was not her own.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 weeks 6 days ago
We measure the earth, sun, stars,...

We measure the earth, sun, stars, and ocean depths. We burrow into the depths of the earth for gold. We search for rivers and mountains on the moon. We discover new stars and know their magnitudes. We sound the depths of gorges and build clever machines. Each day brings a new invention. What don't we think of! What can't we do! But there is something else, the most important thing of all, that we are missing. We do not know exactly what it is. We are like a small child who knows he does not feel well but cannot explain why. We are uneasy, because we know a lot of superfluous facts; but we do not know what is really important-ourselves.

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p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
There are two laws discrete Not...

There are two laws discrete Not reconciled, Law for man, and law for thing.

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Ode: Inscribed to W. H. Channing, st. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 3 weeks ago
But if the labourers could live...

But if the labourers could live on air they could not be bought at any price.

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Vol. I, Ch. 24, Section 4, pg. 657.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
Cock-sure certainty is the source of...

Cock-sure certainty is the source of much that is worst in our present world, and it is something of which the contemplation of history ought to cure us, not only or chiefly because there were wise men in the past, but because so much that was thought wisdom turned out to be folly - which suggests that much of our own supposed wisdom is no better. I do not mean to maintain that we should lapse into a lazy scepticism. We should hold our beliefs, and hold them strongly. Nothing great is achieved without passion, but underneath the passion there should always be that large impersonal survey which sets limits to actions that our passions inspire.

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History as an Art (1954), p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 3 weeks ago
The bodies of which the world...

The bodies of which the world is composed are solids, and therefore have three dimensions. Now, three is the most perfect number, it is the first of numbers, for of one we do not speak as a number, of two we say both, but three is the first number of which we say all. Moreover, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
2 months 2 weeks ago
The critique of the highest values...

The critique of the highest values hitherto does not simply refute them or declare them invalid. It is rather a matter of displaying their origins as impositions which must affirm precisely what ought to be negated by the values established.

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p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 week ago
Every peasant has a lawyer inside...

Every peasant has a lawyer inside of him, just as every lawyer, no matter how urbane he may be, carries a peasant within himself.

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Civilization is Civilism
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 3 days ago
Thinking is more erotic than calculating.

Thinking is more erotic than calculating.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 3 weeks ago
Job endured everything

Job endured everything - until his friends came to comfort him, then he grew impatient.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 2 weeks ago
Man's chief difference from the brutes...

Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities - his preeminence over them simply and solely in the number and in the fantastic and unnecessary character of his wants, physical, moral, aesthetic, and intellectual. Had his whole life not been a quest for the superfluous, he would never have established himself as inexpugnably as he has done in the necessary.

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"Reflex Action and Theism"
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 3 weeks ago
From the fundamental nature of the...

From the fundamental nature of the Philistine, it follows that, in regard to others, as he has no intellectual but only physical needs, he will seek those who are capable of satisfying the latter not the former. And so of all the demands he makes of others the very smallest will be that of any outstanding intellectual abilities. On the contrary, when he comes across these they will excite his antipathy and even hatred. For here he has a hateful feeling of inferiority and also a dull secret envy which he most carefully attempts to conceal even from himself; but in this way it grows sometimes into a feeling of secret rage and rancour. Therefore it will never occur to him to assess his own esteem and respect in accordance with such qualities, but they will remain exclusively reserved for rank and wealth, power and influence, as being in his eyes the only real advantages to excel in which is also his desire.

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E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 344-345
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 4 days ago
The nuclear bomb will turn warfare...

The nuclear bomb will turn warfare into the juggling of images.

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(p. 360)
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 3 weeks ago
He is happy, whose circumstances suit...

He is happy, whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent, who can suit his temper to any circumstances.

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§ 6.9 : Of Qualities Useful to Ourselves, Pt. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 2 weeks ago
There are many difficulties impeding the...

There are many difficulties impeding the rapid spread of reasonableness. One of the main difficulties is that it always takes two to make a discussion reasonable. Each of the parties must be ready to learn from the other. You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 3 weeks ago
Paradise on earth…

Paradise on earth is where I am.

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Le Mondain, 1736
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
6 days ago
So far from a gradual progress...

So far from a gradual progress towards perfection forming any necessary part of the Darwinian creed, it appears to us that it is perfectly consistent with indefinite persistence in one state, or with a gradual retrogression.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 4 weeks ago
Let men learn (as we have...

Let men learn (as we have said above) the difference that exists between the idols of the human mind, and the ideas of the Divine mind. The former are mere arbitrary abstractions; the latter the true marks of the Creator on his creatures, as they are imprinted on, and defined in matter, by true and exquisite touches. Truth, therefore, and utility are here perfectly identical.

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Aphorism 124
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 week ago
Philosophy and religion are enemies, and...

Philosophy and religion are enemies, and because they are enemies they have need of one another. There is no religion without some philosophical basis, no philosophy without roots in religion. ... the attacks which are directed against religion from a presumed scientific or philosophical point of view are merely attacks from another but opposing religious point of view.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
1 month 2 weeks ago
We wish, in a word, equality...

We wish, in a word, equality - equality in fact as a corollary, or rather, as primordial condition of liberty. From each according to his faculties, to each according to his needs; that is what we wish sincerely and energetically.

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As quoted in The Old Order and the New (1890) by J. Morris Davidson
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 1 week ago
The pathfinders of modern thought did...

The pathfinders of modern thought did not derive what is good from the law. ... Their role in history was not that of adapting their words and actions to the text of old documents or generally accepted doctrines: they themselves created the documents and brought about the acceptance of their doctrines.

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p. 33.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
With respect to a true culture...

With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan, - mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards, - because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth, - because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufactures and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.

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p. 493
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 3 weeks ago
When God chooses to let himself...

When God chooses to let himself be born in lowliness, when he who holds all possibilities in his hand takes upon himself the form of a lowly servant, when he goes about defenseless and lets people do with him what they will, he surely must know well enough what he is doing and why he wills it; but for all that it is he who has people in his power and not they who have power over him-so history ought not play Mr. Malapert by this wanting to make manifest who he was.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
Either we must have war against...

Either we must have war against Russia, before she has the atom bomb, or we will have to lie down and let them govern us. ... Anything is better than submission.

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Speech quoted in The Observer (21 November 1948), quoted in Robert Skildesky, Oswald Mosley (1981), p. 542 and Martin Ceadel, Thinking about Peace and War (1987), p. 52
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
Arithmetic must be discovered in just...

Arithmetic must be discovered in just the same sense in which Columbus discovered the West Indies, and we no more create numbers than he created the Indians.

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Principles of Mathematics (1903), p. 451
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 3 weeks ago
The proposal of any new law...

The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

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Chapter XI, Part III, Conclusion of the Chapter, p. 292.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
1 month 2 weeks ago
Christianity set itself the goal of...

Christianity set itself the goal of fulfilling man's unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignored his attainable desires. By promising man eternal life, it deprived him of temporal life, by teaching him to trust in God's help it took away his trust in his own powers; by giving him faith in a better life in heaven, it destroyed his faith in a better life on earth and his striving to attain such a life. Christianity gave man what his imagination desires, but for that very reason failed to give him what he really and truly desires.

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Lecture XXX, Atheism alone a Positive View
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 4 days ago
The sculptural qualities of the image...

The sculptural qualities of the image dim down the purely personal identity.

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(p. 369)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
The feeling of being ten thousand...

The feeling of being ten thousand years behind, or ahead, of the others, of belonging to the beginnings or to the end of humanity...

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 week 6 days ago
We are not born free, nor...

We are not born free, nor do we come into this world with a self-identity and autonomy of our own. We achieve those things, through the conflict and cooperation that weave us into the social fabric.

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Where We Are: The State of Britain Now
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 2 weeks ago
This method of mental training is,...

This method of mental training is, therefore, the immediate preparation for the moral; it completely destroys the root of immorality by never allowing sensuous enjoyment to become the motive. Formerly, that was the first motive to be stimulated and developed, because it was believed that otherwise the pupil could not be influenced or controlled at all.

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General Nature of New Eduction contiunued p. 31
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
Of all that makes us suffer,...

Of all that makes us suffer, nothing - so much as disappointment - gives us the sensation of at last touching Truth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 2 weeks ago
You can do everything with bayonets...

You can do everything with bayonets except sit on them. If you want to preserve your power indefinitely you have to get the consent of the ruled. And this they will do partly by drugs as I foresaw in "Brave new World", and partly by these new techniques of propaganda. They will do it by bypassing the sort of rational side of man and appealing to his subconscious, and his deeper emotions, and his physiology, even, and so making him actually love his slavery. I mean I think this is the danger that actually people may be, in some ways, happy under the new regime. But they will be happy in situations when they oughtn't be happy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 2 weeks ago
No nation which has sunk into...

No nation which has sunk into this state of dependence can raise itself out of it by the means which have usually been adopted hitherto. Since resistance was useless to it when it was still in possession of all its powers, what can such resistance avail now that it has been deprived of the greater part of them?

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Introduction p. 9-10
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 3 days ago
During his lifetime Gurdjieff did not...

During his lifetime Gurdjieff did not publish any books on the techniques of his teaching, and his pupils were bound to secrecy on the subject. Since his death in Paris in 1949, however, many of his works have been published, and there has been a flood of memoirs by disciples and admirers. Gurdjieff was in almost ever respect the antithesis of Aleister Crowley. Whereas Crowley craved publicity, Gurdjieff shunned it. Crowley was forgotten for two decades after his death; Gurdjieff on the contrary, has become steadily better known, and his influence continues to grow. One of the main reasons for this is that there was so little of the charlatan about him. He is no cult figure with hordes of gullible disciples. What he has to teach makes an appeal to the intelligence, and can be fully understood only by those who are prepared to make a serious effort.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 1 week ago
Did ye never read in the...

Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.

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21:27-42 and 44 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
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