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Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.

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
Consists
Mind
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Undesirable
Discipline
Spontaneously
Lead
Willpower
Activity
Compulsion
Desirable
Habit
Activities
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External
Right

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Is the set of all sets which are not members of themselves a member of itself?
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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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Those who advocate common usage in philosophy sometimes speak in a manner that suggests the mystique of the 'common man.'
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If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.
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Undoubtedly the desire for food has been and still is one of the main causes of political events.
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Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning
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Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.
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In emancipation from the fears that beset the slave of circumstance he will experience a profound joy, and through all the vicissitudes of his outward life he will remain in the depths of his being a happy man.
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The method of postulating what we want has many advantages they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.
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Some people would rather die than think.
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... mathematical knowledge ... is, in fact, merely verbal knowledge. 3 means 2+1, and 4 means 3+1. Hence it follows (though the proof is long) that 4 means the same as 2+2. Thus mathematical knowledge ceases to be mysterious.
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Be isolated, be ignored, be attacked, be in doubt, be frightened, but do not be silenced.
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Beware the man of the single book
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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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Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
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The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.
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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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Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery, and in such a world hopes could only be irrational.
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As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our trouble. . . . No Catholic, for instance, takes seriously the text which says that a Bishop should be the husband of one wife.
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The mind is a strange machine which can combine the materials offered to it in the most astonishing ways.
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