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John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 6 days ago
If all mankind minus one, were...

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

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Ch. II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is our deliberate opinion that...

It is our deliberate opinion that the French Revolution, in spite of all its crimes and follies, was a great blessing to mankind.

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'Sir James Mackintosh', The Edinburgh Review (July 1835), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. II (1843), p. 215
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
We tend to believe the premises...

We tend to believe the premises because we can see that their consequences are true, instead of believing the consequences because we know the premises to be true. But the inferring of premises from consequences is the essence of induction; thus the method in investigating the principles of mathematics is really an inductive method, and is substantially the same as the method of discovering general laws in any other science.

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"The Regressive Method of Discovering the Premises of Mathematics" (1907), in Essays in Analysis (1973), pp. 273-274
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
6 days ago
How difficult, how extremely difficult for...

How difficult, how extremely difficult for the soul to sever itself from its body the world: from mountains, seas, cities, people. The soul is an octopus and these are its tentacles. ... No force anywhere on earth is as imperialistic as the human soul. It occupies and is occupied in turn, but it always considers its empire too narrow. Suffocating, it desires to conquer the world in order to breathe freely.

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My Friend The Poet. Mount Athos., Ch. 19, p. 188
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 2 weeks ago
When you are criticising the philosophy...

When you are criticising the philosophy of an epoch, do not chiefly direct your attention to those intellectual positions which its exponents feel it necessary explicitly to defend. There will be some fundamental assumptions which adherents of all the variant systems within the epoch unconsciously presuppose. Such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them. With these assumptions a certain limited number of types of philosophic systems are possible, and this group of systems constitutes the philosophy of the epoch.

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Ch. 3: "The Century of Genius", p. 69
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 days ago
My faculty for disappointment surpasses understanding....

My faculty for disappointment surpasses understanding. It is what lets me comprehend Buddha, but also what keeps me from following him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
4 months 3 weeks ago
All human laws are nourished by...

All human laws are nourished by one divine law.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Tis only from...
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Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 days ago
Prize that which is best in...

Prize that which is best in the universe; and this is that which useth everything and ordereth everything.

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V, 21
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 2 weeks ago
And the central assertion of his...

And the central assertion of his philosophy is that this inner realm is the 'spiritual world' and that once man has learned to enter this realm, he realizes that it is not a mere imaginative reflection of the external world, but a world that possesses its own independent reality.

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p. 161
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
3 months 3 weeks ago
We appear to be faced with...

We appear to be faced with a general difficulty about psychophysical reduction. In other areas the process of reduction is a move in the direction of greater objectivity, toward a more accurate view of the real nature of things. ... The less it depends on a specifically human viewpoint, the more objective is our description. ...Experience itself, however, does not seem to fit the pattern. ... If the subjective character of experience is fully comprehensible only from one point of view, then any shift to greater objectivity - that is, less attachment to a specific viewpoint - does not take us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon: it takes us further away from it.

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p. 174.
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
6 days ago
How does the light of a...

How does the light of a star set out and plunge into black eternity in its immortal course? The star dies, but the light never dies; such also is the cry of freedom. Out of the transient encounter of contrary forces which constitute your existence, strive to create whatever immortal thing a mortal may create in this world - a Cry. And this Cry, abandoning to the earth the body which gave it birth, proceeds and labors eternally.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle
2 days ago
Now a man need not be...

Now a man need not be very conversant in the writings of Chymists to observe, in how Laxe, Indefinite, and almost Arbitrary Senses they employ the Terms of Salt, Sulphur and Mercury; of which I could never find that they were agreed upon any certain Definitions or setled Notions; not onely differing Authors, but not unfrequently one and the same, and perhaps in the same Book, employing them in very differing senses.

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Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
2 months 3 weeks ago
The Spirit of the Law] became...

The Spirit of the Laws became the nobleman's Bible all over Europe.

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Catherine Behrens, The Ancien Régime (1967), p. 78
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 6 days ago
As a rule we disbelieve all...

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

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"The Will to Believe" p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
4 months 1 week ago
No doubt you know that Galileo...

No doubt you know that Galileo had been convicted not long ago by the Inquisition, and that his opinion on the movement of the Earth had been condemned as heresy. Now I will tell you that all things I explain in my treatise, among which is also that same opinion about the movement of the Earth, all depend on one another, and are based upon certain evident truths. Nevertheless, I will not for the world stand up against the authority of the Church. ...I have the desire to live in peace and to continue on the road on which I have started.

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Letter to Marin Mersenne (end of Feb., 1634) as quoted by Amir Aczel, Pendulum: Leon Foucault and the Triumph of Science
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month 2 weeks ago
If we want eternal life, then...

If we want eternal life, then we'll need to rewrite our bug-ridden genetic code and become god-like. "May all that have life be delivered from suffering", said Gautama Buddha. It's a wonderful sentiment. Sadly, only hi-tech solutions can ever eradicate suffering from the living world. Compassion alone is not enough.

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Interview with Nick Bostrom and David Pearce, Dec. 2007
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
5 months 4 days ago
Zeus, the god of gods, who...

Zeus, the god of gods, who rules according to law, and is able to see into such things, perceiving that an honourable race was in a woeful plight, and wanting to inflict punishment on them, that they might be chastened and improve, collected all the gods into their most holy habitation, which, being placed in the centre of the world, beholds all created things.

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Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
3 months 1 week ago
It is manifest... that every soul...

It is manifest... that every soul and spirit hath a certain continuity with the spirit of the universe, so that it must be understood to exist and to be included not only there where it liveth and feeleth, but it is also by its essence and substance diffused throughout immensity... The power of each soul is itself somehow present afar in the universe... Naught is mixed, yet is there some presence. Anything we take in the universe, because it has in itself that which is All in All, includes in its own way the entire soul of the world, which is entirely in any part of it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 3 days ago
If you suspect that my interest...

If you suspect that my interest in the Bible is going to inspire me with sudden enthusiasm for Judaism and make me a convert of mountain‐moving fervor and that I shall suddenly grow long earlocks and learn Hebrew and go about denouncing the heathen — you little know the effect of the Bible on me. Properly read, it is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

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Philosophical Maxims
Paracelsus
Paracelsus
3 weeks ago
We should become angels and not...

We should become angels and not devils, that's why we have been created and born into the world. Therefore be and stick to what God has chosen you for.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 1 week ago
Anxiety and nothing always correspond to...

Anxiety and nothing always correspond to each other. As soon as the actuality of freedom and of spirit is posited, anxiety is canceled. But what then does the nothing of anxiety signify more particularly in paganism. This is fate. Fate is a relation to spirit as external. It is the relation between spirit and something else that is not spirit and to which fate nevertheless stands in a spiritual relation. Fate may also signify exactly the opposite, because it is the unity of necessity and accidental. ... A necessity that is not conscious of itself is eo ipso the accidental in relation to the next moment. Fate, then, is the nothing of anxiety.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 days ago
He who flies from his master...

He who flies from his master is a runaway; but the law is master, and he who breaks the law is a runaway. And he also who is grieved or angry or afraid, is dissatisfied because something has been or is or shall be of the things which are appointed by Him who rules all things, and He is Law, and assigns to every man what is fit. He then who fears or is grieved or is angry is a runaway.

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X, 25
Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
2 months 2 weeks ago
A leftist government doesn't exist because...

A leftist government doesn't exist because being on the left has nothing to do with governments.

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from L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze: G comme Gauche ("Gilles Deleuze's Alphabet Book: Left-wing Politics"), 1988-1989.
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 1 week ago
The most perfect philosophy of the...

The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it.

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Section 4 : Sceptical Doubts Concerning The Operations of The Understanding
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 5 days ago
'Our kingdom go' is the necessary...

'Our kingdom go' is the necessary and unavoidable corollary of 'Thy kingdom come.' For the more there is of self, the less there is of God.

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Chapter VI - Mortification, Non-Attachment, Right Livelihood
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is better...

It is better to conceal ignorance than to expose it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
I do not believe that I...

I do not believe that I am now dreaming, but I cannot prove that I am not. I am, however, quite certain that I am having certain experiences, whether they be those of a dream or those of waking life.

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Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), p. 172
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 3 weeks ago
As one advances in life, one...

As one advances in life, one realises more and more that the majority of men - and of women - are incapable of any other effort than that strictly imposed on them as a reaction to external compulsion. And for that reason, the few individuals we have come across who are capable of a spontaneous and joyous effort stand out isolated, monumentalised, so to speak, in our experience. These are the select men, the nobles, the only ones who are active and not merely reactive, for whom life is a perpetual striving, an incessant course of training. Training = askesis. These are the ascetics.

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Chap. VII: Noble Life And Common Life, Or Effort And Inertia
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 3 days ago
When Fortune is on our side,...

When Fortune is on our side, popular favor bears her company.

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Maxim 275
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 3 weeks ago
The primary meaning of the words...

The primary meaning of the words "modern," "modernity," with which recent times have baptised themselves, brings out very sharply that feeling of "the height of time" which I am at present analysing. "Modern" is what is "in the fashion, "that is to say, the new fashion or modification which has arisen over against the old traditional fashions used in the past. The word "modern" then expresses a consciousness of a new life, superior to the old one, and at the same time an imperative call to be at the height of one's time. For the "modern" man, not to be "modern" means to fall below the historic level.

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Chap. III: The Height Of The Times
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months 2 weeks ago
The two most far-reaching critical theories...

The two most far-reaching critical theories at the beginning of the latest phase of industrial society were those of Marx and Freud. Marx showed the moving powers and the conflicts in the social-historical process. Freud aimed at the critical uncovering of the inner conflicts. Both worked for the liberation of man, even though Marx's concept was more comprehensive and less time-bound than Freud's.

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The Art of Being" Pt. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
3 weeks ago
Credit expansion can bring about a...

Credit expansion can bring about a temporary boom. But such a fictitious prosperity must end in a general depression of trade, a slump.

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Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
3 months 2 days ago
To say that authority, whether secular...

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

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"The Meaning of Life".
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months 5 days ago
Properly understood, then, the desire to...

Properly understood, then, the desire to act justly derives in part from the desire to express most fully what we are or can be, namely free and equal rational beings with the liberty to choose.

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Chapter IV, Section 40, p. 256
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
2 weeks 1 day ago
Inasmuch as it is my wish...

Inasmuch as it is my wish only to compose a hymn of thanksgiving in honour of the god, I have deemed it quite sufficient to discourse to the best of my ability concerning his nature. I do not think I have wasted words to no purpose: the maxim, "Sacrifice to the immortal gods according to thy means," I accept as applying not merely to burnt-offerings, but also to our praises addressed unto the gods. I pray for the third time, in return for this my good intention, the Sun lord of the universe to be propitious to me, and to bestow on me a virtuous life, a more perfect understanding, and a superhuman intellect, and a very easy release from the trammels of life at the time appointed: and after that release, an ascension up to himself, and an abiding place with him, if possible, for all time to come; or if that be too great a recompense for my past life, many and long-continued revolutions around his presence!

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 5 days ago
This year, or this month, or,...

This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.

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Book I, Chapter 1, "The Law of Human Nature"
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 days ago
Be not as one that hath...

Be not as one that hath ten thousand years to live; death is nigh at hand: while thou livest, while thou hast time, be good.

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Meditations. iv. 17.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 months 6 days ago
The blindness of those who think...

The blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple ones becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably in every respect... Yet is the one changed in the course of a few years into the other: changed so gradually, that at no moment can it be said - Now the seed ceases to be, and the tree exists.

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Philosophical Maxims
William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford
5 days ago
We have no reason to fear...

We have no reason to fear lest a habit of conscientious inquiry should paralyse the actions of our daily life. But because it is not enough to say, "It is wrong to believe on unworthy evidence," without saying also what evidence is worthy, we shall now go on to inquire under what circumstances it is lawful to believe on the testimony of others; and then, further, we shall inquire more generally when and why we may believe that which goes beyond our own experience, or even beyond the experience of mankind.

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Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
2 weeks 6 days ago
Men who prefer any load of...

Men who prefer any load of infamy, however great, to any pressure of taxation, however light.

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The Humble Petition of the Rev. Sydney Smith to the House of Congress at Washington (May 18, 1843), in Letters on American Debts (London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1843), p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
6 days ago
Religion is a subject on which...

Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.

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Letter to Richard Rush
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 2 weeks ago
Patience cometh by the grace of...

Patience cometh by the grace of the Soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
3 months 3 weeks ago
Our own experience provides the basic...

Our own experience provides the basic material for our imagination, whose range is therefore limited. It will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one's arms, which enables one to fly around at dusk and dawn catching insects in one's mouth; that one has very poor vision, and perceives the surrounding world by a system of reflected high-frequency sound signals; and that one spends the day hanging upside down by one's feet in an attic. Insofar as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Yet if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task.

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p. 169.
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 days ago
Let it not be in any...

Let it not be in any man's power to say truly of thee that thou art not simple or that thou art not good; but let him be a liar whoever shall think anything of this kind about thee; and this is altogether in thy power.

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X, 32
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
6 days ago
The government of the United States...

The government of the United States have no idea of paying their debt in a depreciated medium, and... in the final liquidation of the payments which shall have been made, due regard will be had to an equitable allowance for the circumstance of depreciation.

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Letter to Jean Baptiste de Ternant, 1791. ME 8:247
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 1 week ago
Who knows whether the best of...

Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty seven names make up the first story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the Æquinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetick, which scarce stands one moment.

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Chapter V
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
Whatever we know without inference is...

Whatever we know without inference is mental.

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Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), p. 224
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months 2 weeks ago
By incestuous symbiosis is meant the...

By incestuous symbiosis is meant the tendency to stay tied to the mother and to her equivalents - blood, family, tribe - to fly from the unbearable weight of responsibility, of freedom, of awareness, and to be protected and loved in a state of certainty dependence that the individual pays for with the ceasing of his own human development.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
2 months 3 weeks ago
I see myself immersed in the...

I see myself immersed in the depths of human existence and standing in the face of the ineffable mystery of the world and of all that is. And in that situation, I am made poignantly and burningly aware that the world cannot be self-sufficient, that there is hidden in some still greater depth a mysterious, transcendent meaning. This meaning is called God. Men have not been able to find a loftier name, although they have abused it to the extent of making it almost unutterable. God can be denied only on the surface; but he cannot be denied where human experience reaches down beneath the surface of flat, vapid, commonplace existence.

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As translated in In Love with Eternity : Philosophical Essays and Fragments (2005) by Richard Schain, p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
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