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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.

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
Power
Give
Still
Astonishing
Littles
Engineering
Little
Philosophical
Giving
Knowledge
Much
Science
Stills

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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I am aware that many divines are far more marvelous than I am, and that I cannot wholly appreciate merits so far transcending my own. Nevertheless, even after making allowances under this head, I cannot but think that Omnipotence operating through all eternity might have produced something better.
Bertrand Russell
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The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.
Bertrand Russell
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In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.
Bertrand Russell
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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?
Bertrand Russell
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St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Bertrand Russell
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Affection cannot be created it can only be liberated.
Bertrand Russell
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Always remember that true happiness is not in getting what you want, but wanting what you already have. He who dies with the most toys is still dead. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
Bertrand Russell
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For my part, the thing I would wish to obtain from money would be leisure with security. But what the typical modern man desires to get with it is more money, with a view to ostentation, splendour, and the outshining of those who have hitherto been his equals.
Bertrand Russell
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Love, children, and work, are the great sources of fertilizing contact between the individual and the rest of the world.
Bertrand Russell
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One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.
Bertrand Russell
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All serious innovation is only rendered possible by some accident enabling unpopular persons to survive.
Bertrand Russell
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For over two thousand years it has been the custom among earnest moralists to decry happiness as something degraded and unworthy
Bertrand Russell
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Dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the source of opinion it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to unbelievers it asks of its disciples that they should inhibit natural kindliness in favor of systematic hatred.
Bertrand Russell
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It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know-or care-about circumstances in the colonies.
Bertrand Russell
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Whenever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness, it is a sign of emotional failure.
Bertrand Russell
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The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress.
Bertrand Russell
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To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
Bertrand Russell
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The saviors of the world, society's last hope.
Bertrand Russell
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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 troubles.
Bertrand Russell
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When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
Bertrand Russell