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Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
3 months 2 weeks ago
The most important subject, and the...

The most important subject, and the first problem of philosophy, is the restoration in man of the lost image of God; so far as this relates to science.Should this restoration in the internal consciousness be fully understood, and really brought about, the object of pure philosophy is attained.

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Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
3 months 2 weeks ago
To make our position clearer, we...

To make our position clearer, we may formulate it in another way. Let us call a proposition which records an actual or possible observation an experiential proposition. Then we may say that it is the mark of a genuine factual proposition, not that it should be equivalent to an experiential proposition, or any finite number of experiential propositions, but simply that some experiential propositions can be deduced from it in conjunction with certain other premises without being deducible from those other premises alone.

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p. 20.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 weeks 5 days ago
Where the preamble declares, that coercion...

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

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Referring to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom, in his Autobiography, 1821
Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
1 month 2 weeks ago
The self-evident truth which makes men...

The self-evident truth which makes men invincible is that inalienably they are inviolate persons.

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Ch. XVII: "On This Rock", §2, p. 375
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 2 weeks ago
The anger of lovers renews the...

The anger of lovers renews the strength of love.

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Maxim 24
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 2 weeks ago
The original thinking force of the...

The original thinking force of the universe progresses and develops itself in all possible determinations of which it is capable, just as the other original natural forces progress and assume all possible configurations. I am a particular determination of the formative force, like the plant; a particular determination of the peculiar motive force, like the animal; and in addition to this a determination of the thinking force: and the union of these three basic forces into one force, into one harmonious development, is the distinguishing characteristic of my species.

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P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 2 weeks ago
The aspects of things that are...

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something - because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. - And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.

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§ 129
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 4 days ago
Philosophy finds religion, and modifies it;...

Philosophy finds religion, and modifies it; and conversely religion is among the data of experience which philosophy must weave into its own scheme. Religion is an ultimate craving to infuse into the insistent particularity of emotion that non-temporal generality which primarily belongs to conceptual thought alone. In the higher organisms the differences of tempo between the mere emotions and the conceptual experiences produce a life-tedium, unless this supreme fusion has been effected. The two sides of the organism require a reconciliation in which emotional experiences illustrate a conceptual justification, and conceptual experiences find an emotional illustration.

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Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 6.
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
3 months 3 days ago
We need to recognize the destructive...

We need to recognize the destructive role played by the media in fanning the flames of the "Black-Jewish Conflict." Cornel West, bell hooks, Richard Green, Barbara Christian, Henry Louis Gates, Marian Wright Edelman, Nell Painter, Albert Raby....Why are these names not as well known outside the African American community as the names of Louis Farrakhan or Leonard Jeffries? Are they, in their diversity and dynamism, less representative of the African American community?

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Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz "Jews, Class, Color, and the Cost of Whiteness" in The Issue is Power
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 3 days ago
A few centuries...
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Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel
4 weeks 1 day ago
If wandering is the liberation from...

If wandering is the liberation from every given point in space, and thus the conceptional opposite to fixation at such a point, the sociological form of the "stranger" presents the unity, as it were, of these two characteristics.

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p. 402; Opening line.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 2 weeks ago
Fate is not in man but...

Fate is not in man but around him.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 2 weeks ago
Democracy is still upon its trial....

Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.

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Robert Gould Shaw: Oration upon the Unveiling of the Shaw Monument
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
3 months 3 days ago
The first act of violence that...

The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.

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The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004), p. 66
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 2 weeks ago
My intention was not to deal...

My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of the truth-teller, or of truth telling... [W]ho is able to tell the truth, about what, with what consequences, and with what relations to power. ...[W]ith the question of the importance of telling the truth, knowing who is able to tell the truth, and knowing why we should tell the truth, we have the roots of what we could call the 'critical' tradition in the West.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Nothing is so wearing as the...

Nothing is so wearing as the possession or abuse of liberty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 2 weeks ago
I believe that one of the...

I believe that one of the things Christianity says is that sound doctrines are all useless. That you have to change your life. (Or the direction of your life.)

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p. 53e
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 3 weeks ago
Knowledge more than a Means.
Knowledge more than a Means. Also without this passion I refer to the passion for knowledge, science would be furthered: science has hitherto increased and grown up without it. The good faith in science, the prejudice in its favour, by which States are at present dominated (it was even the Church formerly), rests fundamentally on the fact that the absolute inclination and impulse has so rarely revealed itself in it, and that science is regarded not as a passion, but as a condition and an "ethos." Indeed, amour-plaisir of knowledge (curiosity) often enough suffices, amour-vanity suffices, and habituation to it, with the afterthought of obtaining honour and bread; it even suffices for many that they do not know what to do with a surplus of leisure, except to continue reading, collecting, arranging, observing and narrating; their "scientific impulse" is their ennui.
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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 4 days ago
No one ever saw Cato change,...

No one ever saw Cato change, no matter how often the state changed: he kept himself the same in all circumstances-in the praetorship, in defeat, under accusation, in his province, on the platform, in the army, in death.

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Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
2 weeks 5 days ago
The Perception of Time involves a...

The Perception of Time involves a constant and latent kind of memory, which may be termed a 'Sense of Succession'. The Perception of Number also involves this Sense of Succession, although in small numbers we appear to apprehend the units simultaneously and not successively.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle
2 weeks 1 day ago
But though much may be said...

But though much may be said to Excuse the Chymists when they write Darkly, and Ænigmatically, about the Preparation of their Elixir, and Some few other grand Arcana, the divulging of which they may upon Grounds Plausible enough esteem unfit; yet when they pretend to teach the General Principles of Natural Philosophers, this Equivocall Way of Writing is not to be endur'd. For in such Speculative Enquiries, where the naked Knowledge of the Truth is the thing Principally aim'd at, what does he teach me worth thanks that does not, if he can, make his Notion intelligible to me, but by Mystical Termes, and Ambiguous Phrases darkens what he should clear up; and makes me add the Trouble of guessing at the sence of what he Equivocally expresses, to that of examining the Truth of what he seems to deliver.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
It is likely that America will...

It is likely that America will be more important during the next century or two, but after that it may well be the turn of China.

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Letter to Rachel Gleason Brooks, May 5, 1930
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 4 days ago
I will tell you: that perfect...

I will tell you: that perfect man, who has attained virtue, never cursed his luck, and never received the results of chance with dejection; he believed that he was citizen and soldier of the universe, accepting his tasks as if they were his orders. Whatever happened, he did not spurn it, as if it were evil and borne in upon him by hazard; he accepted it as if it were assigned to be his duty. "Whatever this may be,"he says, "it is my lot; it is rough and it is hard, but I must work diligently at the task."

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 2 days ago
And virtue they will curse, speaking...

And virtue they will curse, speaking harsh words.

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XI, 32
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 months 3 weeks ago
There is no aphrodisiac like innocence....

There is no aphrodisiac like innocence.

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Chapter 5
Philosophical Maxims
Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas
3 months 2 weeks ago
The mores I return to myself,...

The mores I return to myself, the more I divest myself, under the traumatic effect of persecution , of my freedom as a constituted, wilful, imperialistic subject, the more I discover myself to be responsible' the more just I am, the more guilty I am. I am 'in myself' through others.

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The Levinas reader by Levinas, Emmanuel p. 102
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 3 weeks ago
The middle sort of historians (of...

The middle sort of historians (of which the most part are) spoil all; they will chew our meat for us.

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Book II, Ch. 10. Of Books
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
God may forgive sins, he said,...

God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.

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Society and Solitude
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 2 weeks ago
We no longer have to resort...

We no longer have to resort to superstition when faced with the deep problems: Is there a meaning to life? What are we for? What is man?

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Ch. 1. Why Are People?
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 4 weeks ago
If people should ever start to...

If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.

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C 54 Variant translation: If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.
Philosophical Maxims
William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford
2 weeks 5 days ago
Our lives are guided by that...

Our lives are guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes. Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of thought, are common property, fashioned and perfected from age to age; an heirloom which every succeeding generation inherits as a precious deposit and a sacred trust to be handled on to the next one, not unchanged but enlarged and purified, with some clear marks of its proper handiwork. Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. An awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live.

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Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
2 weeks 1 day ago
The times when the centre of...

The times when the centre of gravity of political development and the crystallising agent of capitalist contradictions lay on the European continent, are long gone by. To-day Europe is only a link in the tangled chain of international connections and contradictions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
4 months 2 weeks ago
Political questions are far too serious...

Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.

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Men in Dark Times
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
2 months 3 weeks ago
I do not define time, space,...

I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all. Only I must observe, that the common people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which it will be convenient to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common.

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Definitions - Scholium
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is an understatement to say...

It is an understatement to say that in this society injustices abound: in truth, it is itself the quintessence of injustice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
4 weeks ago
I had imagined that the prelates...

I had imagined that the prelates of the Galilaeans were under greater obligations to me than to my predecessor. For in his reign many of them were banished, persecuted, and imprisoned, and many of the so-called heretics were executed ... all of this has been reversed in my reign; the banished are allowed to return, and confiscated goods have been returned to the owners. But such is their folly and madness that, just because they can no longer be despots, ... or carry out their designs first against their brethren, and then against us, the worshippers of the gods, they are inflamed with fury and stop at nothing in their unprincipled attempts to alarm and enrage the people.

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Edict to the people of Bostra, reported in Henry Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 weeks ago
Since Sputnik and the satellites, the...

Since Sputnik and the satellites, the planet is enclosed in a manmade environment that ends "Nature" and turns the globe into a repertory theater to be programmed.

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Shakespeare at the Globe mentioning "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players" (As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
Announced by all the trumpets of...

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.

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The Snow-Storm
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 2 weeks ago
For his purposes (and mine), scientific...

For his purposes (and mine), scientific medicine is defined as the set of practices which submit themselves to the ordeal of being tested. Alternative medicine is defined as that set of practices which cannot be tested, refuse to be tested, or consistently fail tests. If a healing technique is demonstrated to have curative properties in properly controlled double-blind trials, it ceases to be alternative. It simply, as Diamond explains, becomes medicine. Conversely, if a technique devised by the President of the Royal College of Physicians consistently fails in double-blind trials, it will cease to be a part of 'orthodox' medicine. Whether it will then become 'alternative' will depend upon whether it is adopted by a sufficiently ambitious quack (there are always sufficiently gullible patients).

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Foreword to Snake Oil and Other Preoccupations by John Diamond, Vintage, 2001.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
4 months 2 weeks ago
Being is only Being for Dasein...

Being is only Being for Dasein.

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Macquarrie & Robinson translation
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is astounding that man, the...

It is astounding that man, the instigator, inventor and vehicle of all these developments, the originator of all judgements and decisions and the planner of the future, must make himself such a quantité negligeable.

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p 45
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 4 days ago
In formal logic, a contradiction is...

In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of a defeat; but in the evolution of real knowledge it marks the first step in progress towards a victory.

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Ch. 12: "Religion and Science", p. 260
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
2 months 3 weeks ago
Now, moral philosophers generally prefer to...

Now, moral philosophers generally prefer to talk about virtues, or about (specific) duties, rights, and so on, rather than about moral images of the world. There are obvious reasons for this; nevertheless, I think that it is a mistake, and that Kant is profoundly right. What we require in moral philosophy is, first and foremost, a moral image of the world, or rather--since, here again, I am more of a pluralist than Kant--a number of complementary moral images of the world.

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Lecture III: Equality and Our Moral Image of the World
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 5 days ago
In comparing civilized man with the...

In comparing civilized man with the animal world, one is as the Alpine traveller, who sees the mountains soaring into the sky and can hardly discern where the deep shadowed crags and roseate peaks end, and where the clouds of heaven begin. Surely the awe-struck voyager may be excused if, at first, he refuses to believe the geologist, who tells him that these glorious masses are, after all, the hardened mud of primeval seas, or the cooled slag of subterranean furnaces-of one substance with the dullest clay, but raised by inward forces to that place of proud and seemingly inaccessible glory. But the geologist is right; and due reflection on his teachings, instead of diminishing our reverence and our wonder, adds all the force of intellectual sublimity, to the mere aesthetic intuition of the uninstructed beholder.

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Ch.2, p. 131-132
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
All the gifted souls, of every...

All the gifted souls, of every rank, who are born to you in this generation. These are appointed, by the true eternal "divine right" which will never become obsolete, to be your governors and administrators; and precisely as you employ them, or neglect to employ them, will your State be favored of Heaven or disfavored. This noble young soul, you can have him on either of two conditions; and on one of them, since he is here in the world, you must have him. As your ally and coadjutor; or failing that, as your natural enemy: which shall it be? I consider that every Government convicts itself of infatuation and futility, or absolves and justifies itself before God and man, according as it answers this question.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Poverty is the lack…

Poverty is the lack of many things, but avarice is the lack of all things.

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Maxim 236
Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
3 months 1 week ago
While there may exist no more...

While there may exist no more than the normal extent of disagreement about the meaning of particular terms or theses contained in these works, there is a startling degree of divergence about the central view, the basic political attitude of Machiavelli.

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Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
2 weeks 2 days ago
Before Descartes, some of the ancients...

Before Descartes, some of the ancients made the essence of matter consist in solid extension. But this opinion, of which all the Cartesians have made much, has at all times been victoriously combated...

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Ch. III Concerning the Extension of Matter
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 3 weeks ago
Fear is in almost all cases...

Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.

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Chapter I, Part III, p. 862.
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is a sore thing to...

It is a sore thing to have laboured along and scaled the arduous hilltops, and when all is done, find humanity indifferent to your achievement. Hence physicists condemn the unphysical; financiers have only a superficial toleration for those who know little of stocks; literary persons despise the unlettered; and people of all pursuits combine to disparage those who have none. But though this is one difficulty of the subject, it is not the greatest. You could not be put in prison for speaking against industry, but you can be sent to Coventry for speaking like a fool. The greatest difficulty with most subjects is to do them well; therefore, please to remember this is an apology. It is certain that much may be judiciously argued in favour of diligence; only there is something to be said against it, and that is what, on the present occasion, I have to say.

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An Apology for Idlers.
Philosophical Maxims
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