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Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 2 weeks ago
...they cudgel their brains with absurd...

...they cudgel their brains with absurd questions, such as, for instance, why God did not make the world many centuries earlier. They persuade themselves that it is easy to conceive, to be sure, how God may discern what is present, that is, what is actual in the time in which he is, but how He may foresee what is future, that is, what is actual in the time in which He is not yet, they deem an intellectual difficulty; as if the existence of the Necessary Being descended through all the moments of an imaginary time, and, having already exhausted a part of His duration, saw before Him the eternity He was yet to live simultaneously with the present events of the world. All these difficulties upon proper insight into the notion of time vanish like smoke.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 months 1 week ago
The source of every Crime, is...

The source of every Crime, is some defect of the Understanding; or some error in Reasoning, or some sudden force of the Passions. Defect in the Understanding, is Ignorance; in Reasoning, Erroneous Opinion.

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The Second Part, Chapter 27, p. 152
Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
3 months 3 weeks ago
Good sense is, of all things….

Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 2 weeks ago
Not one of these nobly equipped...
Not one of these nobly equipped young men has escaped the restless, exhausting, confusing, debilitating crisis of education. ... He feels that he cannot guide himself, cannot help himself, and then he dives hopelessly into the world of everyday life and daily routine, he is immersed in the most trivial activity possible, and his limbs grow weak and weary.
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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 2 weeks ago
He who must still exhort himself,...

He who must still exhort himself, and be exhorted, to will the good, has as yet no firm and ever-ready will, but wills a will anew every time he needs it. But he who has such a stable will, wills what he wills for ever, and cannot under any circumstances will otherwise than he always wills. For him freedom of the will is destroyed and swallowed up in necessity.

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General Nature of New Eduction p 21
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
2 months 3 weeks ago
Social positivism only accepts duties, for...

Social positivism only accepts duties, for all and towards all. Its constant social viewpoint cannot include any notion of rights, for such notion always rests on individuality. We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. These obligations then increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service. ... Any human right is therefore as absurd as immoral. Since there are no divine rights anymore, this concept must therefore disappear completely as related only to the preliminary regime and totally inconsistent with the final state where there are only duties based on functions.

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Le Catéchisme positiviste
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 3 weeks 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
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week ago
It is all work and forgotten...

It is all work and forgotten work, this peopled, clothed, articulate-speaking, high-towered, wide-acred World. The hands of forgotten brave men have made it a World for us; they,- honour to them; they, in spite of the idle and the dastard. This English Land, here and now, is the summary of what was found of wise, and noble, and accordant with God's Truth, in all the generations of English Men. Our English Speech is speakable because there were Hero-Poets of our blood and lineage; speakable in proportion to the number of these. This Land of England has its conquerors, possessors, which change from epoch to epoch, from day to day; but its real conquerors, creators, and eternal proprietors are these following, and their representatives if you can find them: All the Heroic Souls that ever were in England, each in their degree; all the men that ever cut a thistle, drained a puddle out of England, contrived a wise scheme in England, did or said a true and valiant thing in England.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 weeks ago
Their principles always go to the...

Their principles always go to the extreme. They who go with the principles of the ancient Whigs, which are those contained in Mr. Burke's book, never can go too far. ... The opinions maintained in that book never can lead to an extreme, because their foundation is laid in an opposition to extremes.

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p. 470
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
2 months 3 days ago
Useless laws weaken the necessary laws....

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

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Book XXIX: Of the Manner of Composing Laws, Chapter 16: Things to be Observed in the Composing of Laws
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 2 weeks ago
[W]e hold, that the moral obligation...

[W]e hold, that the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty, is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance, ambition and intrigue.

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Address and Declaration at a Select Meeting of the Friends of Universal Peace and Liberty (August 20, 1791) p. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 6 days ago
To have good sense…

To have good sense, is the first principle and fountain of writing well.

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Line 309
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
2 months 2 weeks ago
We exhort the compromisers to open...

We exhort the compromisers to open their hearts to truth, to free themselves of their wretched and blind circumspection, of their intellectual arrogance, and of the servile fear which dries up their souls and paralyzes their movements. Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!

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"The Reaction in Germany" (1842) Often paraphrased as, "The urge to destroy is also a creative urge"
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 2 weeks ago
I can understand myself in believing,...

I can understand myself in believing, although in addition I can in a relative misunderstanding comprehend the human aspect of this life: but comprehend faith or comprehend Christ, I cannot.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
The percept takes priority of the...

The percept takes priority of the concept.

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Letter to Edward T. Hall, 1971, Letters of Marshall McLuhan, p. 397
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
2 months 4 weeks ago
It is requisite to defend those...

It is requisite to defend those who are unjustly accused of having acted injuriously, but to praise those who excel in a certain good.

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Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 3 weeks ago
There is the name and the...

There is the name and the thing: the name is a voice which denotes and signifies the thing; the name is no part of the thing, nor of the substance; 'tis a foreign piece joined to the thing, and outside it. God, who is all fulness in Himself and the height of all perfection, cannot augment or add anything to Himself within; but His name may be augmented and increased by the blessing and praise we attribute to His exterior works: which praise, seeing we cannot incorporate it in Him, forasmuch as He can have no accession of good, we attribute to His name, which is the part out of Him that is nearest to us. Thus is it that to God alone glory and honour appertain; and there is nothing so remote from reason as that we should go in quest of it for ourselves; for, being indigent and necessitous within, our essence being imperfect, and having continual need of amelioration, 'tis to that we ought to employ all our endeavour.

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Ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
2 months 1 week ago
The general co-operation of all members...

The general co-operation of all members of society for the purpose of planned exploitation of the forces of production, the expansion of production to the point where it will satisfy the needs of all, the abolition of a situation in which the needs of some are satisfied at the expense of the needs of others, the complete liquidation of classes and their conflicts, the rounded development of the capacities of all members of society through the elimination of the present division of labor, through industrial education, through engaging in varying activities, through the participation by all in the enjoyments produced by all, through the combination of city and country - these are the main consequences of the abolition of private property.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 3 days ago
We must needs believe in the...

We must needs believe in the other life, in the eternal life beyond the grave. ...And we must needs believe in that other life, perhaps, in order that we may deserve it, in order that we may obtain it, for it may be that he neither deserves it nor will obtain it who does not passionately desire it above reason and, if need be, against reason.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Hölderlin
Friedrich Hölderlin
2 months 2 weeks ago
The earth with yellow pears And...

The earth with yellow pears And overgrown with roses wild Upon the pond is bent, And swans divine, With kisses drunk You drop your heads In the sublimely sobering water. But where, with winter come, am I To find, alas, the floweres, and where The sunshine And the shadow of the world? Cold the walls stand And the wordless, in the wind The weathercocks are rattling.

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"Halves of Life"
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
Sealioning is parasitic....
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Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
3 months 2 weeks ago
After experience had taught me that...

After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.

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I, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
1 week 4 days ago
The other big issue is an...

The other big issue is an emotional one. We tend to feel the greatest bonds of solidarity with people that are close to us. There are very few true citizens of the world. We're citizens of individual countries and we really feel the closest bonds to people that live within our nation, and therefore... the nation becomes a kind of social glue. But if you're going to make a national identity compatible with liberalism, it has to be the right kind of national identity. It has to be one that is open to all of the citizens that actually live in the territory of the nation. It can't exclude certain groups by race, by ethnicity, by religious belief and the like, and therefore it needs to be an open identity that is based on essentially liberal ideas.

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24:46:00
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week ago
Do nothing, only keep agitating, debating;...

Do nothing, only keep agitating, debating; and things will destroy themselves.

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Pt. I, Bk. VI, ch. 3.
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 2 weeks ago
The use of the intellect in...

The use of the intellect in the sciences whose primitive concepts as well as axioms are given by sensuous intuition is only logical, that is, by it we only subordinate cognitions to one another according to their relative universality conformably to the principle of contradiction, phenomena to more general phenomena, and consequences of pure intuition to intuitive axioms. But in pure philosophy, such as metaphysics, in which the use of the intellect in respect to principles is real, that is to say, where the primary concept of things and relations and the very axioms are given originally by the pure intellect itself, and not being intuitions do not enjoy immunity from error, the method precedes the whole science, and whatever is attempted before its precepts are thoroughly discussed and firmly established is looked upon as rashly conceived and to be rejected among vain instances of mental playfulness.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months 2 weeks ago
A just system must generate its...

A just system must generate its own support.

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Chapter V, Section 41, p. 261
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week ago
It is no longer the moral,...

It is no longer the moral, religious, spiritual condition of the people that is our concern, but their physical, practical, economical condition, as regulated by public laws.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 day ago
Everything of this sort is not...

Everything of this sort is not anger, but the semblance of anger, like that of boys who want to beat the ground when they have fallen upon it, and who often do not even know why they are angry, but are merely angry without any reason or having received any injury, yet not without some semblance of injury received, or without some wish to exact a penalty for it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 day ago
What profit is there in crossing...

What profit is there in crossing the sea and in going from one city to another? If you would escape your troubles, you need not another place but another personality. Perhaps you have reached Athens, or perhaps Rhodes; choose any state you fancy, how does it matter what its character may be? You will be bringing to it your own.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 4 weeks ago
It is a conceded fact that...

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

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 1 week ago
Ye do err, not knowing the...

Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

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22:29-32 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
2 months 2 weeks ago
Pantheism makes God into a present,...

Pantheism makes God into a present, real, and material being; empiricism - to which rationalism also belongs - makes God into an absent, remote, unreal, and negative being. Empiricism does not deny God existence, but denies him all positive determinations, because their content is supposed to be only finite and empirical; the infinite cannot, therefore, be an object for man. But the more determinations I deny to a being, the more do I cut it of[ from myself, and the less power and influence do I concede to it over me, the freer do I make myself of it. The more qualities I possess, the more I am for others, and the greater is the extent of my influence and effects. And the more one is, the more one is known to others. Hence, each negation of an attribute of God is a partial atheism, a sphere of godlessness.

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Part I, Section 16
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 6 days ago
As for me…

As for me, when you want a good laugh, you will find me in fine state... fat and sleek, a true hog of Epicurus' herd.

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Book I, epistle iv, lines 15-16
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 6 days ago
As we speak…

As we speak cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in the morrow.

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Book I, ode xi, line 7
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
1 month 3 weeks ago
In sum, a theory is only...

In sum, a theory is only accepted if the theory has substantial, non-ad hoc, explanatory successes. This is in accordance with Popper; unfortunately, it is in even better accordance with the 'inductivist' accounts that Popper rejects, since these stress support rather than falsification.

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The 'corroboration' of theories
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
Hope is the normal form of...

Hope is the normal form of delirium.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
You find as you look around...

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress of humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or even mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

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"The Emotional Factor"
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
The love of power is a...

The love of power is a part of human nature, but power-philosophies are, in a certain precise sense, insane. The existence of the external world, both that of matter and of other human beings, is a datum, which may be humiliating to a certain kind of pride, but can only be denied by a madman. Men who allow their love of power to give them a distorted view of the world are to be found in every asylum: one man will think he is Governor of the Bank of England, another will think he is the King, and yet another will think he is God. Highly similar delusions, if expressed by educated men in obscure language, lead to professorships in philosophy; and if expressed by emotional men in eloquent language, lead to dictatorships. Certified lunatics are shut up because of the proneness to violence when their pretensions are questioned; the uncertified variety are given control of powerful armies, and can inflict death and disaster upon all sane men within their reach.

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Ch. 16: Power philosophies
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 day ago
That man, I declare, is happy...

That man, I declare, is happy whom nothing makes less strong than he is; he keeps to the heights, leaning upon none but himself; for one who sustains himself by any prop may fall.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is, of course, clear that...

It is, of course, clear that a country with a large foreign population must endeavour, through its schools, to assimilate the children of immigrants. It is, however, unfortunate that a large part of this process should be effected by means of a somewhat blatant nationalism.

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Ch. 10: Modern Homogeneity
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
1 week 4 days ago
A right exists in theory... All...

A right exists in theory... All human beings have the same set of rights, but rights need to be enforced by the state. It needs to rely on the coercive power of the state... its army, its police force, to actually make those rights something real that citizens can enjoy, and the enforcement power is not universal. ...We wouldn't want to live in a world in which every liberal state wanted to enforce liberal rights in every other state in the world.

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24:09
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 3 days ago
Physiology does not teach us how...

Physiology does not teach us how to digest, nor logic how to discourse, nor esthetics how to feel beauty or express it, nor ethics how to be good. And indeed it is well if they do not teach us how to be hypocrites; for pedantry, whether it be pedantry of logic, or of esthetics, or of ethics, is at bottom nothing but hypocrisy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 4 weeks ago
The dominant, almost general, idea of...

The dominant, almost general, idea of revolution - particularly the Socialist idea - is that revolution is a violent change of social conditions through which one social class, the working class, becomes dominant over another class, the capitalist class. It is the conception of a purely physical change, and as such it involves only political scene shifting and institutional rearrangements. Bourgeois dictatorship is replaced by the "dictatorship of the proletariat" - or by that of its "advance guard," the Communist Party. Lenin takes the seat of the Romanovs, the Imperial Cabinet is rechristened Soviet of People's Commissars, Trotsky is appointed Minister of War, and a labourer becomes the Military Governor General of Moscow. That is, in essence, the Bolshevik conception of revolution, as translated into actual practice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 day ago
Virtue runs no risk of becoming...

Virtue runs no risk of becoming contemptible by being exposed to view, and it is better to be despised for simplicity than to be tormented by continual hypocrisy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 2 weeks ago
They pass peaceful lives who ignore...

They pass peaceful lives who ignore mine and thine.

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Maxim 790
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 3 weeks ago
In a revolution, as in a...

In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.

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Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 71.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 2 weeks ago
Mr. Sensible learned only catchwords from...

Mr. Sensible learned only catchwords from them. He could talk like Epicurus of spare diet, but he was a glutton. He had from Montaigne the language of friendship, but no friend.

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Pilgrim's Regress 176
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week ago
Alas, our noble men of genius,...

Alas, our noble men of genius, Heaven's real messengers to us, they also rendered nearly futile by the wasteful time;-preappointed they everywhere, and assiduously trained by all their pedagogues and monitors, to "rise in Parliament," to compose orations, write books, or in short speak words, for the approval of reviewers; instead of doing real kingly work to be approved of by the gods!

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 2 weeks ago
He [the child] does not despise...

He [the child] does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.

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"On Three Ways of Writing for Children", 1952
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 2 weeks ago
The Value of myth is that...

The Value of myth is that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity.

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p. 90
Philosophical Maxims
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