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There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Bertrand Russell

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Bertrand Russell
Age: 97 †
Born: 1872
Born: May 18
Died: 1970
Died: February 2
Analytic Philosopher
Autobiographer
Epistemologist
Essayist
Journalist
Logician
Mathematician
Metaphysician
Peace Activist
Philosopher
Tryleg
Bertrand Arthur William Russell
Russell
Bertrand Russell
3rd Earl Russell
Bertrand Russell
Earl Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell
3rd Earl Russell
Gained
Useless
Pleasure
Knowledge
Much
Uselessness

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety.
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A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.
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I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness.
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The man who only loves beautiful things is dreaming, whereas the man who knows absolute beauty is wide awake.
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Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.
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A man of Seville is shaved by the Barber of Seville if and only if the man does not shave himself. Does the barber shave himself?
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Man can be stimulated by hope or driven by fear, but the hope and the fear must be vivid and immediate if they are to be effective without producing weariness.
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The secrets to happiness include enterprise, exploration of one's interests and the overcoming of obstacles.
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I do not believe that science per se is an adequate source of happiness, nor do I think that my own scientific outlook has contributed very greatly to my own happiness, which I attribute to defecating twice a day with unfailing regularity.
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To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind are prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error.
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You could live without the opera singer, but not without the services of the baker. On this ground you might say that the baker performs a greater service but no lover of music would agree.
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Suppose atomic bombs had reduced the population of the world to one brother and sister should they let the human race die out?
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In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces but in thought, in aspiration, we are free, free from our fellowmen, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the tyranny of death.
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What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.
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Aristotle and Plato considered Greeks so innately superior to barbarians that slavery is justified so long as the master is Greek and the slave barbarian.
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A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.
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The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.
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No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor, but honest.
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Ants and savages put strangers to death.
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Love, children, and work, are the great sources of fertilizing contact between the individual and the rest of the world.
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