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Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.

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
Habit
Merciless
Comfortable
Subversive
Terrible
Swift
Free
Established
Thought
Destructive
Great
Revolutionary
Privilege
Institutions

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What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.
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We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.
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All serious innovation is only rendered possible by some accident enabling unpopular persons to survive.
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Another merit of home is that it preserves the diversity between individuals. If we were all alike, it might be convenient for the bureaucrat and the statistician, but it would be very dull, and would lead to a very unprogressive society.
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Next to worry probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy.
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All movements go too far.
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None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.
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Grasshopper always wrong in argument with chicken.
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It would now be technically possible to unify the world, abolish war and poverty altogether, if men desired their own happiness more than the misery of their enemies.
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Calculus required continuity, and continuity was supposed to require the infinitely little but nobody could discover what the infinitely little might be.
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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.
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The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. If you take your children for a picnic on a doubtful day, they will demand a dogmatic answer as to whether it will be fine or wet, and be disappointed in you when you cannot be sure.
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Although it is a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out, sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation
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I went to Salt Lake City and the Mormons tried to convert me, but when I found they forbade tea and tobacco I thought it was no religion for me.
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Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau.
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Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.
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Indemnity for the past and security for the future.
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The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.
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The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as a training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely utilitarian point of view as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom.
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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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