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Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
5 months 2 weeks ago
Before mass leaders seize the power...

Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.

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On "alternate facts"
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
4 months ago
Women dream till they have no...

Women dream till they have no longer the strength to dream; those dreams against which they so struggle, so honestly, vigorously, and conscientiously, and so in vain, yet which are their life, without which they could not have lived; those dreams go at last. All their plans and visions seem vanished, and they know not where; gone, and they cannot recall them. They do not even remember them. And they are left without the food of reality or of hope. Later in life, they neither desire nor dream, neither of activity, nor of love, nor of intellect. The last often survives the longest. They wish, if their experiences would benefit anybody, to give them to someone. But they never find an hour free in which to collect their thoughts, and so discouragement becomes ever deeper and deeper, and they less and less capable of undertaking anything.

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Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
4 months 1 week ago
Being good is just a matter...

Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.

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The Nice and the Good (1968), ch. 14, p. 127. Murdoch attributed this opinion to her character Kate Gray. It was not her own.
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 3 weeks ago
We are sleeping on a volcano......

We are sleeping on a volcano... A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon.

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Speaking in the Chamber of Deputies just prior to to outbreak of revolution in Europe (1848).
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
6 months 2 weeks ago
The best friend is he that,...

The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person's good, wishes it for that person's own sake.

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Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
4 months ago
To hope means to be ready...

To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.

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Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
2 months 1 week ago
Wine is a mixture of moisture...

Wine is a mixture of moisture and light.

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As quoted in Lorenzo Magalotti's Scientific and Scholarly Letter
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 2 weeks ago
The whole art of government consists...

The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 1 week ago
How great is the path proper...

How great is the path proper to the Sage! Like overflowing water, it sends forth and nourishes all things, and rises up to the height of heaven. All-complete is its greatness! It embraces the three hundred rules of ceremony, and the three thousand rules of demeanor. It waits for the proper man, and then it is trodden. Hence it is said, "Only by perfect virtue can the perfect path, in all its courses, be made a fact."

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
2 months 3 days ago
The divine is God's concern; the...

The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is - unique, as I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself!

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Cambridge 1995, p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
5 months 1 week ago
Humility is the fruit of inner...

Humility is the fruit of inner security and wise maturity. To be humble is to be so sure of one's self and one's mission that one can forego calling excessive attention to one's self and status. And, even more pointedly, to be humble is to revel in the accomplishments or potentials of others -- especially those with whom one identifies and to whom one is linked organically.

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(p38)
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 1 week ago
Elias truly shall first come, and...

Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.

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17:11-12 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 2 weeks ago
For the most trifling reasons, and...

For the most trifling reasons, and sometimes for no conceivable reason at all, his majesty has rejected laws of the most salutary tendency. The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But previous to the infranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa. Yet our repeated attempts to effect this by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his majesty's negative: thus preferring the immediate advantages of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American states, and to the rights of human nature deeply wounded by this infamous practice.

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A Summary View of the Rights of British America
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 2 weeks ago
..If you are troubled by external...

..If you are troubled by external circumstances, it is not the circumstances that trouble you, but your own perception of them - and they are in your power to change at any time.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 2 weeks ago
In this book....
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Main Content / General
Henry George
Henry George
1 month 2 weeks ago
That there is a common cause,...

That there is a common cause, an that it is either what we call material progress or something closely connected with material progress, becomes more than an inference when it is noted that the phenomena we class together and speak of as industrial depression are but intensifications of phenomena which always accompany material progress, and which show themselves more clearly and strongly as material progress goes on. Where the conditions to which material progress everywhere tends are the most fully realized-that is to say, where population is densest, wealth greatest, and the machinery of production and exchange most highly developed - we find the deepest poverty, the sharpest struggle for existence, and the most of enforced idleness.

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Introductory : The Problem
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
4 months 2 weeks ago
The people should never be deceived,...

The people should never be deceived, under any pretext or for any purpose. It would not only be criminal but detrimental to the revolutionary cause, for deception of any kind, by its very nature, is shortsighted, petty, narrow, always sewn with rotten threads, so that it inevitably tears and is exposed.

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"Appendix A"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
4 months 1 week ago
That a man be willing, when...

That a man be willing, when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace, and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.

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The First Part, Chapter 14, p. 64-65
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
5 months 1 week ago
The political triumph of Donald Trump...

The political triumph of Donald Trump is a symbol and symptom-not cause or origin-of our imperial meltdown. Trump is neither alien nor extraneous to American culture and history. In fact, he is as American as apple pie. Yet he is a sign of our spiritual bankruptcy-all spectacle and no substance, all narcissism and no empathy, all appetite and greed and no wisdom and maturity. Yet his triumph flows from the implosion of a Republican Party establishment beholden to big money, big military, and big scapegoating of vulnerable peoples of color, LGBTQ peoples, immigrants, Muslims, and women; from a Democratic Party establishment beholden to big money, big military, and the clever deployment of peoples of color, LGBTQ peoples, immigrants, Muslims, and women to hide and conceal the lies and crimes of neoliberal policies here and abroad; and from a corporate media establishment that aided and abetted Trump owing to high profits and revenues.

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2017 introduction
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 2 weeks ago
He was a man who looked...

He was a man who looked at what ought to be done, not to the reputation which is got by a man's acts.

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I, 16
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 3 weeks ago
There is no fundamental biological reason...

There is no fundamental biological reason why the human genome can't be rewritten to allow everyone to be "in" love with everyone else - if we should so choose. But simply loving each other will be miraculous enough; and will probably suffice. An empty religious piety can be transformed into a biological reality. 

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"Brave New World? A Defence of Paradise-Engineering", BLTC Research, 1998
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 2 weeks ago
It is an odd circumstance that...

It is an odd circumstance that neither the old nor the new, by itself, is interesting; the absolutely old is insipid; the absolutely new makes no appeal at all. The old in the new is what claims the attention,-the old with a slightly new turn.

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Chapter XI: Attention
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
5 months 1 week ago
The man who is fortunate in...

The man who is fortunate in his choice of son-in-law gains a son; the man unfortunate in his choice loses his daughter also.

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Freeman (1948), p. 169
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 3 weeks ago
The Christian Religion not only was...

The Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: and whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.

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Section 10 : Of Miracles Pt. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 4 weeks ago
There is no word or action...

There is no word or action but has its echo in Eternity. Thought is an Idea in transit, which when once released, never can be lured back, nor the spoken word recalled. Nor ever can the overt act be erased All that thou thinkest, sayest, or doest bears perpetual record of itself, enduring for Eternity.

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As quoted in Pythagoron: The Religious, Moral, and Ethical Teachings of Pythagoras (1947) by Hobart Huson, p. 99
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 2 weeks ago
Having always lived in fear of...

Having always lived in fear of being surprised by the worst, I have tried in every circumstance to get a head start, flinging myself into misfortune long before it occurred.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 months 2 weeks ago
Survival machines that can simulate the...

Survival machines that can simulate the future are one jump ahead of survival machines that who can only learn of the basis of trial and error. The trouble with overt trial is that it takes time and energy. The trouble with overt error is that it is often fatal. ...The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective consciousness. Why this should have happened is, to me, the most profound mystery facing modern biology.

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Ch. 4. The Gene machine
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 2 weeks ago
Time will prolong time, and life...

Time will prolong time, and life will serve life. In this field that is both limited and bulging with possibilities, everything to himself, except his lucidity, seems unforeseeable to him. What rule, then, could emanate from that unreasonable order? The only truth that might seem instructive to him is not formal: it comes to life and unfolds in men. The absurd mind cannot so much expect ethical rules at the end of its reasoning as, rather, illustrations and the breath of human lives.

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
6 months ago
The art of persuasion consists as...

The art of persuasion consists as much in that of pleasing as in that of convincing, so much more are men governed by caprice than by reason!

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
4 months 1 week ago
When men and women agree, it...

When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.

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Ch. VI: Free Society
Philosophical Maxims
Étienne de La Boétie
Étienne de La Boétie
2 months 1 week ago
Do not imagine that there is...

Do not imagine that there is any bird more easily caught by decoy, nor any fish sooner fixed on the hook by wormy bait, than are all these poor fools neatly tricked into servitude by the slightest feather passed, so to speak, before their mouths. Truly it is a marvelous thing that they let themselves be caught so quickly at the slightest tickling of their fancy. Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naïvely, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books.

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Part 2
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 3 days ago
It is indeed foolish to be...

It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy at some future time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
Every man would like to be...

Every man would like to be God, if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility.

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Ch. 1: The Impulse to Power
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
4 months 1 week ago
Labour is the source of all...

Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source -- next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.

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The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 2 weeks ago
The survival of democracy depends on...

The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information.

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Chapter 6 (p. 47)
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 months 2 weeks ago
God is the infinite ALL. Man...

God is the infinite ALL. Man is only a finite manifestation of Him. Or better yet: God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part. God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter. The more God's manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love. God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists... We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us. All conclusions and guidelines based on this consciousness should fully satisfy both our desire to know God as such as well as our desire to live a life based on this recognition.

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Entry in Tolstoy's Diary
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
2 months 3 days ago
Because our time is struggling toward...

Because our time is struggling toward the word with which it may express its spirit, many names come to the fore and all make claim to being the right one. Without our assistance, time will not bring the right word to light; we must all work together on it. If, however, so much depends on us, we may reasonably ask what they have made of us and what they propose to make of us; we ask about the education through which they seek to make us creators of that word. Do they conscientiously cultivate our predisposition to become creators or do they treat us only as creatures whose nature simply permits training? Therefore we are concerned above all with what they make of us in the time of our plasticity; the school question is a life question.

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p. 11
Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
1 month 2 weeks ago
What is our task in the...

What is our task in the question of peace? It does not consist merely in vigorously demonstrating at all times the love of peace of the Social Democrats; but first and foremost our task is to make clear to the masses of people the nature of militarism and sharply and clearly to bring out the differences in principle between the standpoint of the Social Democrats and that of the bourgeois peace enthusiasts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 month 1 week ago
Our time is Gothic in...

Our time is Gothic in its spirit. Unlike the Renaissance, it is not dominated by a few outstanding personalities. The twentieth century has established the democracy of the intellect. In the republic of art and science, there are many men who take an equally important part in the intellectual movements of our age. It is the epoch rather than the individual that is important. There is no one dominant personality like Galileo or Newton. Even in the nineteenth century, there were still a few giants who outtopped all others. Today the general level is much higher than ever before in the history of the world, but there are few men whose stature immediately sets them apart from all others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
4 months ago
It is the private dominion over...

It is the private dominion over things that condemns millions of people to be mere nonentities, living corpses without originality or power of initiative, human machines of flesh and blood, who pile up mountains of wealth for others and pay for it with a gray, dull and wretched existence for themselves. I believe that there can be no real wealth, social wealth, so long as it rests on human lives - young lives, old lives and lives in the making.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 3 weeks ago
Step back in time; look closely...

Step back in time; look closely at the child in the very arms of his mother; see the external world reflected for the first time in the yet unclear mirror of his understanding; study the first examples which strike his eyes; listen to the first words which arouse within him the slumbering power of thought; watch the first struggles which he has to undergo; only then will you comprehend the source of his prejudices, the habits, and the passions which are to rule his life. The entire man, so to speak, comes fully formed in the wrappings of his cradle.

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Chapter II.
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 3 weeks ago
Genes and culture have co-evolved. But...

Genes and culture have co-evolved. But crudely, natural selection "designed" male human primates to hunt nonhumans and build coalitions of other male human primates in order to wage territorial wars of aggression. Nature didn't design us to become a scientific community and collaborate to overcome aging. It's difficult to imagine that any human enemy could inflict such gruesome damage on the victims as growing old. The ravages of aging strike down combatants and civilians alike. So the trillions of dollars that humans currently spend on ways to harm and kill each other ("defence") would be more fruitfully spent on defeating our common enemy. We should work together to build a "Triple S" civilisation of superlongevity, superhappiness and superintelligence.

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Transhumanism 2017: Towards a 'Triple S' civilisation of Superlongevity, Superintelligence and Superhappiness, Timeship Buddha
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 2 weeks ago
"If a nation expects to be...

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free," said Jefferson, "it expects what never was and never will be."

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Chapter 4 (p. 34)
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4 months 2 weeks ago
All writers, not ours alone but...

All writers, not ours alone but foreigners also, who have sought to represent Absolute Beauty, were unequal to the task, for it is an infinitely difficult one. The beautiful is the ideal ; but ideals, with us as in civilized Europe, have long been wavering. There is in the world only one figure of absolute beauty: Christ. That infinitely lovely figure is, as a matter of course, an infinite marvel.

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Letter to his Niece Sofia Alexandrovna, Geneva, January 1, 1868. Ethel Golburn Mayne, Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoyevsky to His Family and Friends (1879), Dostoevsky's Letters XXXIX, p. 136
Philosophical Maxims
Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
4 months 3 weeks ago
The man who makes his religion...

The man who makes his religion a means to the gaining of this world, will lose both worlds alike; whereas the man who gives up this world for the sake of religion, will get both worlds alike.

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The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali, Allen & Unwin (1963), p. 152.
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
3 months 2 weeks ago
The student should have enough knowledge...

The student should have enough knowledge of his or her cultural tradition to know how it got to be the way it is. This involves both political and social history, on the one hand, as well as the mastery of some of the great philosophical and literary texts of the culture on the other. It involves reading not only texts that are of great value, like those of Plato, but many less valuable that have been influential, such as the works of Marx. For the United States, the dominant tradition is, and for the foreseeable future, will remain the European tradition. The United States is, after all, a product of the European Enlightenment. However, you do not understand your own tradition if you do not see it in relation to others. Works from other cultural traditions need to be studied as well.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
4 months 1 week ago
In philosophical anthropology, ... where the...

In philosophical anthropology, ... where the subject is man in his wholeness, the investigator cannot content himself, as in anthropology as an individual science, with considering man as another part of nature and with ignoring the fact that he, the investigator, is himself a man and experiences this humanity in his inner experience in a way that he simply cannot experience any part of nature.

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p. 147
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 1 week ago
This is the moment when it...

This is the moment when it becomes clear that the images of madness are nothing but dream and error, and that if the unfortunate sufferer who is blinded by them invokes them, it is the better to disappear with them into the annihilation for which they are destined.

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Part Two: 2. The Transcendence of Delirium
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 2 weeks ago
For me, reason is the natural...

For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition.

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"Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare", Rehabilitations and Other Essays, 1939
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Our opinion here is that that...

Our opinion here is that that place has been so deeply concerned in smuggling, that if it wants it is because it has illegally sent away what it ought to have retained for its own consumption.

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Letter to Lieutenant Governor Levi Lincoln of Massachusetts (November 13, 1808) concerning a petition from the island of Nantucket for food during the American embargo.
Philosophical Maxims
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