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Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

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
Freedom
Government
Thinking
Secure
Thinks
Exist
Opinion

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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The tendency of our perceptions is to emphasise increasingly the objective elements in an impression, unless we have some special reason, as artists have, for doing the opposite.
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This, however, is a passing nightmare in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.
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Without civic morality communities perish without personal morality their survival has no value.
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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.
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The psychology of adultery has been falsified by conventional morals, which assume, in monogamous countries, that attraction to one person cannot coexist with affection for another. Everybody knows that this is untrue.
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Shakespeare . . . If he does not give you delight, you had better ignore him [if you can].
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The man who is unhappy will, as a rule, adopt an unhappy creed, while the man who is happy will adopt a happy creed each may attribute his happiness or unhappiness to his beliefs, while the real causation is the other way round.
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Is a man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water crawling impotently on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is he perhaps both as once?
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The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
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It is only theory that makes men completely incautious.
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Televison allows thousands of people to laugh at the same joke and still remain alone.
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When I found myself regarded as respectable, I began to wonder what sins I had committed. I must be very wicked, I thought. I began to engage in the most uncomfortable introspection.
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When the journey from means to end is not too long, the means themselves are enjoyed if the end is ardently desired.
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Choose your parents wisely.
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Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
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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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A generation educated in fearless freedom will have wider and bolder hopes than are possible to us
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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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No satisfaction based upon self-deception is solid.
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I think it would be just to say the most essential characteristic of mind is memory, using this word in its broadest sense to include every influence of past experience on present reactions.
Bertrand Russell