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Lucretius
Lucretius
3 months 2 weeks ago
Nothing can be produced….

Nothing can be produced from nothing.

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Book I, lines 156-157 (tr. Munro) Variant translations: Nothing can be created from nothing. Nothing can be created out of nothing.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
The day of your...
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Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 weeks 3 days ago
Soon fades the spell, soon comes...

Soon fades the spell, soon comes the night: Say will it not be then the same, Whether we played the black or white,Whether we lost or won the game?

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Sermon in a Churchyard, st. 8 (1825), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. II (1860), p. 390
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 1 week ago
If pains be to be taken...

If pains be to be taken to give him a manly air and assurance betimes, it is chiefly as a fence to his virtue when he goes into the world under his own conduct.

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Sec. 70
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 2 weeks ago
The oneness of the universe, and...

The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying the self-identity of things and their mutual diversities.

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Pt. III, ch. 1, sec. 7.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 6 days ago
That chastity of honour which felt...

That chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound.

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Volume iii, p. 332
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 4 weeks ago
Domination has its own aesthetics, and...

Domination has its own aesthetics, and democratic domination has its democratic aesthetics.

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p. 65
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
2 months 3 weeks ago
If you are to be kept...

If you are to be kept right, you must possess either good friends or red-hot enemies. The one will warn you, the other will expose you.

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Plutarch, Moralia, 74C
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 6 days ago
If a man knows what it...

If a man knows what it is right to do, he does not require a formal reason. And a person that has been thus trained, either possesses these first principles already, or can easily acquire them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 5 days ago
The Republican form of government is...

The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature - a type nowhere at present existing.

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Vol. 3, Ch. XV, The Americans
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 3 days ago
It built itself up endlessly, like...

It built itself up endlessly, like a chess game, and the telemetrists began to use a computer to program the computer that designed the program for the computer that programmed the robot-controlling computer.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
3 weeks ago
The life, the fortune, and the...

The life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated - without haste, but without remorse.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month 1 day ago
To travel hopefully is a better...

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

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El Dorado.
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 6 days ago
Society can and does execute its...

Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own.

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Ch. 1: Introductory
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
3 months 1 week ago
My opinion concerning God differs widely...

My opinion concerning God differs widely from that which is ordinarily defended by modern Christians. For I hold that God is of all things the cause immanent, as the phrase is, not transient. I say that all things are in God and move in God, thus agreeing with Paul, and, perhaps, with all the ancient philosophers, though the phraseology may be different ; I will even venture to affirm that I agree with all the ancient Hebrews, in so far as one may judge from their traditions, though these are in many ways corrupted. The supposition of some, that I endeavour to prove in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus the unity of God and Nature (meaning by the latter a certain mass or corporeal matter), is wholly erroneous. As regards miracles, I am of opinion that the revelation of God can only be established by the wisdom of the doctrine, not by miracles, or in other words by ignorance.

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Letter 21 (73) to Henry Oldenburg , November
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 5 days ago
All law relations are determined by...

All law relations are determined by this principle: each one must restrict his freedom by the possibility of the freedom of the other. ... My freedom is limited by the freedom of the other only on condition that he limits his freedom by the conception of mine. Otherwise he is lawless. Hence, if a law-relation is to result from my cognition of the other, the cognition and the consequent limitation of freedom must have been mutual. All law-relation between persons is, therefore, conditioned by their mutual cognition of each other, and is, at the same time, completely determined thereby.

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P. 173-175
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 3 weeks ago
Though absent from our eyes, Christ...

Though absent from our eyes, Christ our Head is bound to us by love. Since the whole Christ is Head and body, let us so listen to the voice of the Head that we may also hear the body speak.He no more wished to speak alone than He wished to exist alone, since He says: Behold, I am with you all days, unto the consummation of the world (Matt. 28:20). If He is with us, then He speaks in us, He speaks of us, and He speaks through us; and we too speak in Him.

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pp. 420-421
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 week ago
As the past has ceased to...

As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity. Variant translation: When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.

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Book Four, Chapter VIII
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 1 week ago
As soon as the land of...

As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.

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Chapter VI, p. 60.
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
2 weeks 4 days ago
Our western science is a child...

Our western science is a child of moral virtues; and it must now become the father of further moral virtues if its extraordinary material triumphs in our time are not to bring human history to an abrupt, unpleasant and discreditable end.

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"A Turning Point in Man's Destiny", The New York Times Magazine (26 December 1954) p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 3 weeks 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
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
3 months 2 weeks ago
All who say the same things...

All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner; and hence the incomparable author of the Art of Conversation pauses with so much care to make it understood that we must not judge of the capacity of a man by the excellence of a happy remark that we heard him make. ...let us penetrate, says he, the mind from which it proceeds... it will oftenest be seen that he will be made to disavow it on the spot, and will be drawn very far from this better thought in which he does not believe, to plunge himself into another, quite base and ridiculous.

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Montaigne, Essais, liv. III, chap. viii.-Faugère
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 5 days 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
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 weeks 3 days ago
If we consider merely the subtlety...

If we consider merely the subtlety of disquisition, the force of imagination, the perfect energy and elegance of expression, which characterise the great works of Athenian genius, we must pronounce them intrinsically most valuable; but what shall we say when we reflect that from hence have sprung, directly or indirectly, all the noblest creations of the human intellect; that from hence were the vast accomplishments, and the brilliant fancy of Cicero; the withering fire of Juvenal; the plastic imagination of Dante; the humour of Cervantes; the comprehension of Bacon; the wit of Butler; the supreme and universal excellence of Shakspeare? All the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every country and in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens. Wherever a few great minds have made a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them; inspiring, encouraging, consoling.

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p. 178
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
2 weeks 5 days ago
Those least responsible for climate change...

Those least responsible for climate change are worst affected by it.

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Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 1 week ago
If women get tired and die...

If women get tired and die of bearing, there is no harm in that; let them die as long as they bear; they are made for that.

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-- Essays, quoted in Luther On "Woman"
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month 1 day ago
To know what you prefer, instead...

To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

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An Inland Voyage (1878), Ch. III, "The Royal Sport Nautique".
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 1 week ago
Many of these were not prisoners...

Many of these were not prisoners of war, and redeemed from savage conquerors, as some plead; and they who were such prisoners, the English, who promote the war for that very end, are the guilty authors of their being so; and if they were redeemed, as is alleged, they would owe nothing to the redeemer but what he paid for them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 1 day ago
Unfortunately, instead of working out that...

Unfortunately, instead of working out that they have probably misunderstood evolution, creationists conclude, instead, that evolution must be false.

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Heat the Hornet, a review of Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution is True
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 5 days ago
The universal hypocrisy has so entered...

The universal hypocrisy has so entered into the flesh and blood of all classes of our modern society, it has reached such a pitch that nothing in that way can rouse indignation. Hypocrisy in the Greek means "acting," and acting-playing a part-is always possible. Chapter XII, Conclusion-Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand Variant Translation: Hypocrisy with good reason means the same as acting, and anybody can pretend - act a part.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 6 days ago
The only thing that will redeem...

The only thing that will redeem mankind is co-operation, and the first step towards co-operation lies in the hearts of individuals.

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p. 212
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
3 months 3 weeks ago
Truth is the ultimate end of...

Truth is the ultimate end of the whole universe.

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I, 1, 2
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 6 days ago
A physicist looks for causes; that...

A physicist looks for causes; that does not necessarily imply that there are causes everywhere. A man may look for gold without assuming that there is gold everywhere; if he finds gold, well and good, if he doesn't he's had bad luck. The same is true when the physicists look for causes.

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BBC Radio Debate on the Existence of God, Russell vs. Copleston, 1948
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 4 weeks ago
There is hardly a philosophy which...

There is hardly a philosophy which has not invoked something like the will or desire to know, the love of truth, etcetera. But, in truth, very few philosophers-apart, perhaps, from Spinoza and Schopenhauer-have accorded it more than a marginal status; as if there was no need for philosophy to say first of all what the name that it bears actually refers to. As if placing at the head of its discourse the desire to know, which it repeats in its name, was enough to justify its own existence and show-at a stroke-that it is necessary and natural: All men desire to know. Who, then, is not a philosopher, and how could philosophy not be the most necessary thing in the world?

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pp. 4-5
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 6 days ago
But it is better perhaps to...

But it is better perhaps to examine next the universal good, and to enquire in what sense the expression is used. Though such an investigation is likely to be difficult, because the persons who have introduced these ideas are our friends. Yet it will perhaps appear the best, and indeed the right course, at least for the preservation of truth, to do away with private feelings, especially as we are philosophers; for since both are dear to us, we are bound to prefer the truth.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 6 days ago
Nothing contributes more to nourish elevation...

Nothing contributes more to nourish elevation of sentiments in a people, than the large and free character of their habitations.

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(p. 55)
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 weeks ago
the impressionable mind of the child...

the impressionable mind of the child realizes early enough that the lives of their parents are in contradiction to the ideas they represent; that, like the good Christian who fervently prays on Sunday, yet continues to break the Lord's commands the rest of the week, the radical parent arraigns God, priesthood, church, government, domestic authority, yet continues to adjust himself to the condition he abhors.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 weeks ago
Today, status quo bias runs deep....

Today, status quo bias runs deep. Conservation biology is an ideology masquerading as a science. Many researchers seek to extend the tenets of conservation biology to humans. By contrast, a benevolent superintelligence might view Darwinian life on Earth as an infestation of biological malware and act accordingly. The amount of suffering caused by Homo sapiens is hard to quantify. But the suffering is immense and growing daily with the spread of industrialised animal abuse. Reply to "Why would someone want to end humanity?"

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, Quora, 10 Mar. 2018
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
1 month 3 weeks ago
To eat, teeth must meet. The...

To eat, teeth must meet.

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The Sacred and Profane Love Machine (1974), p. 66.
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
2 months 3 weeks ago
Nowadays, to say that we are...

Nowadays, to say that we are clever animals is not to say something philosophical and pessimistic but something political and hopeful - namely, if we can work together, we can make ourselves into whatever we are clever and courageous enough to imagine ourselves becoming. This is to set aside Kant's question "What is man?" and to substitute the question "What sort of world can we prepare for our great grandchildren?"

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"Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality." Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (1998).
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 week ago
If there ever are great revolutions...

If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. That is to say, it will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise thereto.

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Book Three, Chapter XXI.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 5 days ago
Ramsgate is full of Jews and...

Ramsgate is full of Jews and fleas.

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MEKOR IV, 490, 25 August 1879
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
3 weeks ago
So far from the posterior lobe,...

So far from the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippocampus minor, being structures peculiar to and characteristic of man, as they have been over and over again asserted to be, even after the publication of the clearest demonstration of the reverse, it is precisely these structures which are the most marked cerebral characters common to man with the apes. They are among the most distinctly Simian peculiarities which the human organism exhibits.

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Ch.2, p. 119
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 1 week ago
As to love our neighbour as...

As to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity, so it is the great precept of nature to love ourselves only as we love our neighbour, or what comes to the same thing, as our neighbour is capable of loving us. Section I, Chap. V.

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Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
2 months 1 week ago
In the final, positive state, the...

In the final, positive state, the mind has given over the vain search after Abolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the cause of phenomenon, and applies itself to the tudy of their laws, - that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of the facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts, the number of which continually diminishes with the progress of science.

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Vol I
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
1 month 2 weeks ago
When contemporary feminist movement first began,...

When contemporary feminist movement first began, feminist writings and scholarship by black women was groundbreaking. The writings of black women like Cellestine Ware, Toni Cade Bambara, Michele Wallace, Barbara Smith, and Angela Davis, to name a few, were all works that sought to articulate, define, speak to and against the glaring omissions in feminist work, the erasure of black female presence.

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Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
1 month 2 weeks ago
People often say to me, You...

People often say to me, You don't know what a wife and mother feels. No, I say, I don't and I'm very glad I don't. And they don't know what I feel. ... I am sick with indignation at what wives and mothers will do of the most egregious selfishness. And people call it all maternal or conjugal affection, and think it pretty to say so. No, no, let each person tell the truth from his own experience.

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Letter to Madame Mohl
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 6 days ago
To the Deity must be left...

To the Deity must be left the task of infinite perfection, while to us poor, weak, incapable mortals, there was no rule of conduct so safe as experience.

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Speech in the House of Commons (6 May 1791), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXIX (1817), column 388
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
3 months ago
We think of beauty as being...

We think of beauty as being most worthy of reverence. But what is most worthy of reverence lights up only where the magnificent strength to revere is alive. To revere is not a thing for the petty and lowly, the incapacitated and underdeveloped. It is a matter of tremendous passion; only what flows from such passion is in the grand style.

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p. 125
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
1 month 2 weeks ago
A major task in organizing is...

A major task in organizing is to determine, first, where the knowledge is located that can provide the various kinds of factual premises that decisions require.

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p. 24.
Philosophical Maxims
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