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Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

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
Ferocity
Religion
Mentality
Stimulates
Fear
Discrimination
Herd
Tolerance
Racism
Herds
Instinct
Regarded
Toward
Collectives
Members
Tends
Xenophobia
Produce
Collective

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An Honest politician will not be tolerated by a democracy unless he is very stupid ... because only a very stupid man can honestly share the prejudices of more than half the nation.
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Worry is a form of fear, and all forms of fear produce fatigue. A man who has learned not to feel fear will find the fatigue of daily life enormously diminished.
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I used, when I was younger, to take my holidays walking. I would cover 25 miles a day, and when the evening came I had no need of anything to keep me from boredom, since the delight of sitting amply sufficed.
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Patriotism which has the quality of intoxication is a danger not only to its native land but to the world, and My country never wrong is an even more dangerous maxim than My country, right or wrong.
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Be isolated, be ignored, be attacked, be in doubt, be frightened, but do not be silenced.
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Indemnity for the past and security for the future.
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You could take up the line that some of the gnostics took up - a line which I often thought was a very plausible one - that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.
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Children, after being limbs of Satan in traditional theology and mystically illuminated angels in the minds of educational reformers, have reverted to being little devils not theological demons inspired by the evil one, but scientific Freudian abominations inspired by the unconscious.
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Bad philosophers may have a certain influence good philosophers, never.
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It is no credit to the orthodox that they do not now believe all the absurdities that were believed 150 years ago. The gradual emasculation of the Christian doctrine has been effected in spite of the most vigorous resistance, and solely as the result of the onslaughts of freethinkers.
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So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it.
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Education, and the life of the mind generally, is a matter in which individual initiative is the chief thing needed the function of the state should begin and end with insistence on some kind of education, and, if possible, a kind which promotes mental individualism, not a kind which happens to conform to the prejudices of government officials.
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We have almost reached the point where praise of rationality is held to mark a man as an old fogey regrettably surviving from a bygone age.
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I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.
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There may be no good reasons for very many opinions that are held with passion.
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The experience of overcoming fear is extraordinarily delightful.
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On the one hand, philosophy is to keep us thinking about things that we may come to know, and on the other hand to keep us modestly aware of how much that seems like knowledge isn't knowledge
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It's not what you have lost, but what you have left that counts.
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Americans need rest, but do not know it. I believe this to be a large part of the explanation of the crime wave in the United States.
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Moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modern world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda.
Bertrand Russell