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Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 1 week ago
What strikes one here above all...

What strikes one here above all is the crudely empirical conception of profit derived from the outlook of the ordinary capitalist, which wholly contradicts the better esoteric understanding of Adam Smith.

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Vol. II, Ch. X, p. 202.
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
6 months 3 weeks ago
Let not that which in the...

Let not that which in the case of another is contrary to nature become an evil for you; for you are born not to be humiliated along with others, nor to share in their misfortunes, but to share in their good fortune. If, however, someone is unfortunate, remember that his misfortune concerns himself. For God made all mankind to be happy, to be serene.

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Book III, ch. 24, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
7 months 1 week ago
Perhaps then we must begin with...

Perhaps then we must begin with such facts as are known to us from individual experience. It is necessary therefore that the person who is to study, with any tolerable chance of profit, the principles of nobleness and justice and politics generally, should have received a good moral training.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
4 months 3 weeks ago
In the end, I am moved...

In the end, I am moved by causes and ideas that I can actually choose to support because they conform to values and principles that I believe in.

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p. 88
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 4 weeks ago
Has any man, or any society...

Has any man, or any society of men, a truth to speak, a piece of spiritual work to do; they can nowise proceed at once and with the mere natural organs, but must first call a public meeting, appoint committees, issue prospectuses, eat a public dinner; in a word, construct or borrow machinery, wherewith to speak it and do it. Without machinery, they were hopeless, helpless.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
6 months 1 week ago
I am not virtuous. Our sons...

I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.

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Act 3, sc. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
5 months 5 days ago
Naturally, every age thinks that all...

Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history.

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p. 33
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
2 months 4 weeks ago
The scientific enterprise as a whole...

The scientific enterprise as a whole does from time to time prove useful, open up new territory, display order, and test long-accepted belief. Nevertheless, the individual engaged on a normal research problem is almost never doing any one of these things. Once engaged, his motivation is of a rather different sort. What then challenges him is the conviction that, if only he is skillful enough, he will succeed in solving a puzzle that no one before has solved or solved so well.

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p. 38.
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
5 months 4 weeks ago
The enmity of one's kindred is...

The enmity of one's kindred is far more bitter than the enmity of strangers.

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Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
5 months 2 weeks ago
The Universe is one, infinite, immobile....

The Universe is one, infinite, immobile. The absolute potential is one, the act is one, the form or soul is one, the material or body is one, the thing is one, the being in one, one is the maximum and the best... It is not generated, because there is no other being it could desire or hope for, since it comprises all being. It does not grow corrupt. because there is nothing else into which it could change, given that it is itself all things. It cannot diminish or grow, since it is infinite.

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As translated by Paul Harrison
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
7 months 6 days ago
People don't stop things they enjoy...

People don't stop things they enjoy doing just because they reach a certain age. They don't stop playing tennis just because they turn 40, they don't stop with sex just because they turn 40; they keep it up as long as they can if they enjoy it, and learning will be the same thing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
4 months 1 week ago
Go - take the mother's soul,...

Go - take the mother's soul, and learn three truths: Learn What dwells in man, What is not given to man, and What men live by. When thou hast learnt these things, thou shalt return to heaven.

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Ch. IV
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 3 weeks ago
The human soul has need of...

The human soul has need of disciplined participation in a common task of public value, and it has need of personal initiative within this participation. The human soul has need of security and also of risk. The fear of violence or of hunger or of any other extreme evil is a sickness of the soul. The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is also a sickness of the soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
7 months 1 week ago
If one prefers to have little...

If one prefers to have little with blessing, to have truth with concern, to suffer instead of exulting over imagined victories, then one presumably will not be disposed to praise the knowledge, as if what it bestows were at all proportionate to the trouble it causes, although one would not therefore deny that through its pain it educates a person, if he is honest enough to want to be educated rather than to be deceived, out of the multiplicity to seek the one, out of abundance to seek the one thing needful, as this is plainly and simply offered precisely according to the need for it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
6 months 1 week ago
... the attempt to make heaven...

... the attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell. It leads to intolerance. It leads to religious wars, and to the saving of souls through the inquisition. And it is, I believe, based on a complete misunderstanding of our moral duties. It is our duty to help those who need help; but it cannot be our duty to make others happy, since this does not depend on us, and since it would only too often mean intruding on the privacy of those towards whom we have such amiable intentions.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 24 "Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason"
Philosophical Maxims
Mozi
Mozi
2 months 2 weeks ago
If every one in the world...

If every one in the world will love universally; states not attacking one another; houses not disturbing one another; thieves and robbers becoming extinct; emperor and ministers, fathers and sons, all being affectionate and filial -- if all this comes to pass the world will be orderly. Therefore, how can the wise man who has charge of governing the empire fail to restrain hate and encourage love? So, when there is universal love in the world it will be orderly, and when there is mutual hate in the world it will be disorderly.

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Book 4; Universal Love I
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
6 months 4 days ago
The world is all that is...

The world is all that is the case.

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(1) Original German: Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
5 months 4 weeks ago
I believe that there is a...

I believe that there is a necessary connection in both directions between the physical and the mental, but that it cannot be discovered a priori. Opinion is strongly divided on the credibility of some kind of functionalist reductionism, and I won't go through my reasons for being on the antireductionist side of that debate. Despite significant attempts by a number of philosophers to describe the functional manifestations of conscious mental states, I continue to believe that no purely functionalist characterization of a system entails - simply in virtue of our mental concepts - that the system is conscious.

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"Conceiving the Impossible and the Mind-Body Problem," Royal Institute of Philosophy annual lecture, given in London on February 18, 1998, published in Philosophy vol. 73 no. 285, July 1998, pp 337-352, Cambridge University Press, p. 337.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
4 months 1 week ago
The Quakers sent me books, from...

The Quakers sent me books, from which I learnt how they had, years ago, established beyond doubt the duty for a Christian of fulfilling the command of non-resistance to evil by force, and had exposed the error of the Church's teaching in allowing war and capital punishment.

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Chapter I, The Doctrine of Non-resistance to Evil by Force has been Professed by a Minority of Men from the Very Foundation of Christianity
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 4 days ago
We always love . . ....

We always love . . . despite; and that "despite" covers an infinity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
3 months ago
The way of learning is none...

The way of learning is none other than finding the lost mind.

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6A:11, as translated by Wing-tsit Chan in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (1963), p. 58
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim
2 months 5 days ago
The non-evaluative general total conception of...

The non-evaluative general total conception of ideology is to be found primarily in those historical investigations, where, provisionally and for the sake of the simplification of the problem, no judgments are pronounced as to the correctness of the ideas to be treated. This approach confines itself to discovering the relations between certain mental structures and the life-situations in which they exist. We must constantly ask ourselves how it comes about that a given type of social situation gives rise to a given interpretation. Thus the ideological element in human thought, viewed at this level, is always bound up with the existing life-situation of the thinker. According to this view human thought arises, and operates, not in a social vacuum but in a definite social milieu.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
6 months 1 week ago
And because it may be too...

And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage...

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Second Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. XII, sec. 143
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 6 days ago
Many things about.....
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Horace
Horace
5 months 4 weeks ago
The man who is tenacious….

The man who is tenacious of purpose in a rightful cause is not shaken from his firm resolve by the frenzy of his fellow citizens clamoring for what is wrong, or by the tyrant's threatening countenance.

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Book III, ode iii, line 1
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
6 months 1 week ago
Alexander's career was piracy pure and...

Alexander's career was piracy pure and simple, nothing but an orgy of power and plunder, made romantic by the character of the hero. There was no rational purpose in it, and the moment he died his generals and governors attacked one another.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
5 months 5 days ago
Eros is a superhuman power which,...

Eros is a superhuman power which, like nature herself, allows itself to be conquered and exploited as though it were impotent. But triumph over nature is dearly paid for. Nature requires no explanations of principle, but asks only for tolerance and wise measure. "Eros is a mighty daemon," as the wise Diotima said to Socrates. We shall never get the better of him, or only to our own hurt. He is not the whole of our inward nature, though he is at least one of its essential aspects.

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Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW 7 (1957). "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" P.32f
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
3 months 3 days ago
On the left you had a...

On the left you had a different aspect of individual autonomy that was pushed to an extreme, which really had to do with the autonomy that individuals have to create their own lifestyles. ...The basic concept of liberal autonomy has to do with your ability to make moral choices, but as time went on the emphasis came to be not on making the right moral choices within an existing moral framework, but rather to be able to make up that framework on your own, that that was the ultimate expression of individual human freedom, and it has obvious problems for a society because all societies have to be based on shared norms that allow people to coordinate their actions, to communicate, and the like... If you believe that the rules can be... set by anybody and that transgressing existing rules is automatically a good thing, you're not going to have... a stable society.

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15:05
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
7 months 1 week 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
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
3 months 3 days ago
In Kant's words, human beings are...

In Kant's words, human beings are uncaused causes, and therefore have infinite value, and a liberal regime protects that autonomy by giving people rights... The right to speak, to organize, to associate, and ultimately to have a share of power by being able to vote. ...This is ...the moral status, the dignity that life in a liberal regime that does respect individual rights, gives us, and it is one of the reasons that to this day, people do not want to live in authoritarian countries that do not recognize the fundamental dignity of their... citizens.

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11:47
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
6 months 1 week ago
How does it become a man...

How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answered that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
5 months 1 day ago
At midday the daily food of...

At midday the daily food of all Spaniards was the puchero or cocido, as the dish is really called which the foreigners call pot-pourri or olla podrida. This contains principally yellow chick-peas, with a little bacon, some potatoes or other vegetables and normally also small pieces of beef or sausage, all boiled in one pot at a very slow fire; the liquid of the same makes the substantial broth that is served first.

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p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Sir Thomas Browne
Sir Thomas Browne
5 months 2 weeks ago
To be nameless in worthy deeds...

To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history.But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the Pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the Temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it.

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Chapter V
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 1 week ago
Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness...

Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness is dead.

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Justice in War-Time (1916), p. 192
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
2 months 1 week ago
An art that heals and protects...

An art that heals and protects its subject is a geography of scars.

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Damage
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
4 months 6 days ago
Fortune is like glass…

Fortune is like glass-the brighter the glitter, the more easily broken.

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Maxim 280
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
6 months 3 days ago
The most taboo issue on U.S....

The most taboo issue on U.S. campuses these days, in many instances, has to do with the vicious Israeli occupation of precious Palestinians. It's very difficult to have a respectful, robust conversation about that. And I am unequivocal in my solidarity with Palestinian brothers and sisters... I'm not in any way going to stop talking about the Palestinian plight and predicament.

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Speaking in Too Radical for Harvard? Cornel West on Failed Fight for Tenure, Biden's First 50 Days & More, Democracy Now!
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
5 months 6 days ago
No one, of a surety, wanders...

No one, of a surety, wanders farther from the mark than he who fancies to himself that he already understands this marvellous Kingdom, and can, in few words, fathom its constitution, and everywhere find the right path. To no one, who has broken off, and made himself an Island, will insight rise of itself, nor even without toilsome effort. Only to children, or childlike men, who know not what they do, can this happen. Long, unwearied intercourse, free and wise Contemplation, attention to faint tokens and indications; an inward poet-life, practised senses, a simple and devout spirit: these are the essential requisites of a true Friend of Nature; without these no one can attain his wish.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 1 week ago
Even when the experts all agree,...

Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.

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A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42 (1996), p. 281
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 1 week ago
Frugality is founded on the principle...

Frugality is founded on the principle that all riches have limits.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
5 months 1 week ago
Man has many wishes that he...

Man has many wishes that he does not really wish to fulfil, and it would be a misunderstanding to suppose the contrary. He wants them to remain wishes, they have value only in his imagination; their fulfilment would be a bitter disappointment to him. Such a desire is the desire for eternal life. If it were fulfilled, man would become thoroughly sick of living eternally, and yearn for death. In reality man wishes merely to avoid a premature, violent or gruesome death. Everything has its measure, says a pagan philosopher; in the end we weary of everything, even of life; a time comes when man desires death. Consequently there is nothing frightening about a normal, natural death, the death of a man who has fulfilled himself and lived out his life.

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Lecture XXX, Atheism alone a Positive View
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
3 months 3 weeks ago
Owning our seeds through seed freedom,...

Owning our seeds through seed freedom, our own food through food freedom, our own minds and intelligence through intellectual freedom, our own economies through freedom to produce and consume ecologically and locally, is the 'barbarianism' that the 1% would like to extinguish.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
5 months 1 day ago
Poetry is one of the destinies...

Poetry is one of the destinies of speech.... One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language.

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Introduction, sect. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 months 1 week ago
All hopes and despairs vanish in...

All hopes and despairs vanish in the voracious, funneling whirlwind of God. God laughs, wails, kills, sets us on fire, and then leaves us in the middle of the way, charred embers. And I rejoice to feel between my temples, in the flicker of an eyelid, the beginning and the end of the world. I condense into a lightning moment the seeding, sprouting, blossoming, fructifying, and the disappearance of every tree, animal, man, star, and god. All Earth is a seed planted in the coils of my mind. Whatever struggles for numberless years to unfold and fructify in the dark womb of matter bursts in my head like a small and silent lightning flash. Ah! let us gaze intently on this lightning flash, let us hold it for a moment, let us arrange it into human speech. Let us transfix this momentary eternity which encloses everything, past and future, but without losing in the immobility of language any of its gigantic erotic whirling.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
6 months 1 week ago
I am trying here to prevent...

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic-on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

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Book II, Chapter 3, "The Shocking Alternative"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 1 week ago
Paper is poverty,... it is only...

Paper is poverty,... it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.

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Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington (27 May 1788) ME 7:36
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 months 5 days ago
Remember that neither the future nor...

Remember that neither the future nor the past pains thee, but only the present. But this is reduced to a very little, if thou only circumscribest it, and chidest thy mind, if it is unable to hold out against even this.

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VIII, 36
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
6 months 1 week ago
The universal propensity to believe in...

The universal propensity to believe in invisible, intelligent power, if not an original instinct, being at least a general attendant of human nature, may be considered as a kind of mark or stamp, which the divine workman has set upon his work; and nothing surely can more dignify mankind, than to be thus selected from all other parts of the creation, and to bear the image or impression of the universal Creator. But consult this image, as it appears in the popular religions of the world. How is the deity disfigured in our representations of him! What caprice, absurdity, and immorality are attributed to him! How much is he degraded even below the character, which we should naturally, in common life, ascribe to a man of sense and virtue!

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Part XV - General corollary
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5 months 1 week ago
For socialism is not merely the...

For socialism is not merely the labour question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
5 months 1 day ago
He that is not on my...

He that is not on my side is against me, and he that does not gather with me scatters.

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12:30, New World Translation
Philosophical Maxims
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