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If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

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
Change
Adversity
Give
Demand
Giving
Circumstances
Life
Personal
Joy
Happiness
Bound
Success
Entirely
Difficult
Bounds

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious.
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The human animal, like others, is adapted to a certain amount of struggle for life [and] the mere absence of effort from his life removes an essential ingredient of happiness. [. . .] He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
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Those who in principle oppose birth control are either incapable of arithmetic or else in favour of war, pestilence and famine as permanent features of human life.
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My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.
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Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness is dead.
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The Eugenic Society . . . is perpetually bewailing the fact that wage-earners breed faster than middle-class people.
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A life which goes excessively against natural impulse is... likely to involve effects of strain that may be quite as bad as indulgence in forbidden impulses would have been. People who live a life which is unnatural beyond a point are likely to be filled with envy, malice and uncharitableness.
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Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young the other tenth is physiological, and will occur in one way or another whatever the state of the law may be.
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Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.
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Each act of cruelty is eternally a part of the universe nothing that happens later can make that act good rather than bad, or can confer perfection on the whole of which it is a part.
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The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident but if it is the outcome of deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis.
Bertrand Russell
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There is darkness without and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, nor vastness anywhere only triviality for a moment and then nothing.
Bertrand Russell
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Fervent religious believers sacrifice pleasures of the body, but instead enjoy pleasures of the mind, including the joy of knowing that those men who didn't follow their religion would be tortured for eternity.
Bertrand Russell
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Human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those who seem least to demand it.
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A man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if indeed such a man exists.
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One of the main causes of trouble in the world is dogmatic and fanatical belief in some doctrine for which there is no adequate evidence
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The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.
Bertrand Russell
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We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
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What science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.
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No rules, however wise, are a substitute for affection and tact.
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