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Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter second, telling other people to do so.

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
Work
Telling
Kind
Second
People
Position
Altering
Two
Relative
Earth
Near
Firsts
Surface
Matter
Drinking
First
Kinds

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.
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Science can teach us, and I think our hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supporters, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make the world a fit place to live.
Bertrand Russell
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Berkeley retains the merit of having shown that the existence of matter is capable of being denied without absurdity.
Bertrand Russell
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Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Bertrand Russell
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Something of the hermit's temper is an essential element in many forms of excellence, since it enables men to resist the lure of popularity, to pursue important work in spite of general indifference or hostility, and arrive at opinions which are opposed to prevalent errors.
Bertrand Russell
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Altogether it will be found that a quiet life is characteristic of great men, and that their pleasures have not been of the sort that would look exciting to the outward eye.
Bertrand Russell
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Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos.
Bertrand Russell
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The essence of education is that it is a change effected in the organism to satisfy the operator.
Bertrand Russell
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The resistance to a new idea increases by the square of its importance.
Bertrand Russell
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When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us.
Bertrand Russell
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I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.
Bertrand Russell
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Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful therefore the worse they are performed, the better.
Bertrand Russell
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There is an element of the busybody in our conception of virtue: unless a man makes himself a nuisance to a great many people, we do not think he can be an exceptionally good man.
Bertrand Russell
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The first dogma which I came to disbelieve was that of free will. It seemed to me that all notions of matter were determined by the laws of dynamics and could not therefore be influenced by human wills.
Bertrand Russell
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You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.
Bertrand Russell
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All the important human advances that we know of since historical times began have been due to individuals of whom the majority faced virulent public opposition.
Bertrand Russell
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War...seems a mere madness, a collective insanity.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.
Bertrand Russell
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I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.
Bertrand Russell