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One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

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
Humor
Submission
Respect
Unnecessary
Goes
Tyranny
Opinion
Avoid
Public
Prison
Keep
Rule
Anything
Necessary
Voluntary
Beyond
Starvation

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Sir Arthur Eddington deduces religion from the fact that atoms do not obey the laws of mathematics. Sir James Jeans deduces it from the fact that they do.
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The saviors of the world, society's last hope.
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There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
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I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of WORK, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in the organised diminution of work.
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Your writing is never as good as you hoped but never as bad as you feared.
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(on A History of Western Philosophy) I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if, indeed, such man exists.
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There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.
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A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.
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Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos.
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Humanistic ethics is based on the principle that only humans themselves can determine the criterion for virtue and not an authority transcending us.
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Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
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Heretical views arise when the truth is uncertain, and it is only when the truth is uncertain that censorship is invoked.
Bertrand Russell
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Abstract work, if one wishes to do it well, must be allowed to destroy one's humanity one raises a monument which is at the same time a tomb, in which, voluntarily, one slowly inters oneself.
Bertrand Russell
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It is the things for which there is no evidence that are believed with passion.
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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It is only through imagination that men become aware of what the world might be without it, ‘progress’ would become mechanical and trivial.
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Half the useful work in the world consists of combating the harmful work.
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I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds.
Bertrand Russell
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Neither the Church nor modern public opinion condemns petting, provided it stops short at a certain point.
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Although it is a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out, sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation
Bertrand Russell