Maxioms Pet

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    When you want to organize knowledge. you will be careful to base the classification upon essential qualities. You will thus derive classes in which the members have the greatest amount of resemblance to one another and the greatest amount of difference from the members of other classes. But suppose that, instead of organizing knowledge, you set out to organize ignorance and prejudice. You will then do precisely the opposite...You will keep the classification vague and flexible, so that it can be made to include just whatever individuals you choose.

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  9  /  19  

A great man is he who has not lost the heart of a child.

A great man is he who has not lost the heart of a child.

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Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era read more

Quite often in history action has been the echo of words. An era of talk was followed by an era of events. The new barbarism of the twentieth century is the echo of words bandied about by brilliant speakers and writers in the second half of the nineteenth.

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  10  /  21  

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there. - The read more

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there. - The Tempation to Exist.

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Any act often repeated soon forms a habit; and habit allowed, steady gains in strength, At first it may be read more

Any act often repeated soon forms a habit; and habit allowed, steady gains in strength, At first it may be but as a spider's web, easily broken through, but if not resisted it soon binds us with chains of steel.

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Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

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  22  /  24  

We shall assume that what each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but by pictures made read more

We shall assume that what each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but by pictures made by himself or given to him. If his atlas tells him the world is flat he will not sail near what he believes to be the edge of our planet for fear of falling off. If his maps include a fountain of eternal youth, a Ponce de Leon will go off in quest of it. If someone digs up yellow dirt that looks like gold, he will for a time act exactly as if he has found gold. The way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do. It does not determine what they will achieve. It determines their effort, their feelings, their hopes, not their accomplishments and results.

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...originality consists of the achievement of new combinations, and not of the creation of something out of nothing.

...originality consists of the achievement of new combinations, and not of the creation of something out of nothing.

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It is the fate of every great achievement to be pounced upon by pedants and imitators who drain it of read more

It is the fate of every great achievement to be pounced upon by pedants and imitators who drain it of life and turn it into an orthodoxy which stifles all stirrings of originality.

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The most basic question is not what is best but who shall decide what is best.

The most basic question is not what is best but who shall decide what is best.

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