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

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens.
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Happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly.
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The satisfaction to be derived from success in a great constructive enterprise is one of the most massive that life has to offer.
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No man treats a motorcar as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behavior to sin he does not say, 'You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.' He attempts to find out what is wrong and to set it right.
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The doctrine (of) maintaining that the language of daily life, with words used in their ordinary meanings, suffices for philosophy . . . I find myself totally unable to accept . . . . Because it makes almost inevitable the perpetuation amongst philosophers of the muddle-headedness they have taken over from common sense.
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In his youth, Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry and had a natural daughter. At this period, he was a bad man. Then he became good, abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles and wrote bad poetry.
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To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
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All religions are both harmful and untrue.
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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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Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful therefore the worse they are performed, the better.
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The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.
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Our individual life is brief, and perhaps the whole life of mankind will be brief if measured in astronomical scale
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Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.
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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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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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Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.
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Bad philosophers may have a certain influence good philosophers, never.
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When we have told how things behave when they are electrified, and under what circumstances they are electrified, we have told all there is to know
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Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.
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To realize the unimportance of time is the gate to wisdom.
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