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The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.
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
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More quotes by Bertrand Russell
For over two thousand years it has been the custom among earnest moralists to decry happiness as something degraded and unworthy
Bertrand Russell
Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines.
Bertrand Russell
What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.
Bertrand Russell
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
Bertrand Russell
It is only through imagination that men become aware of what the world might be without it, ‘progress’ would become mechanical and trivial.
Bertrand Russell
All serious innovation is only rendered possible by some accident enabling unpopular persons to survive.
Bertrand Russell
The skill of the politician consists in guessing what people can be brought to think advantageous to themselves the skill of the expert consists in calculating what really is advantageous, provided people can be brought to think so.
Bertrand Russell
Whatever we know without inference is mental.
Bertrand Russell
Belief in a Divine mission is one of the many forms of certainty that have afflicted the human race.
Bertrand Russell
A life which goes excessively against natural impulse is... likely to involve effects of strain that may be quite as bad as indulgence in forbidden impulses would have been. People who live a life which is unnatural beyond a point are likely to be filled with envy, malice and uncharitableness.
Bertrand Russell
It will be found, as men grow more tolerant in their instincts, that many uniformities now insisted upon are useless and even harmful.
Bertrand Russell
Ants and savages put strangers to death.
Bertrand Russell
To the young I should offer two maxims: Don't accept superficial solutions of difficult problems. It is better to do a little good than much harm. I should not offer anything more specific every young person should decide on his or her own credo.
Bertrand Russell
The camera is as subjective as we are.
Bertrand Russell
It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians.
Bertrand Russell
Science, by itself cannot, supply us with an ethic.
Bertrand Russell
The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more amazing becomes what human beings have achieved.
Bertrand Russell
If we spent half an hour every day in silent immobility, I am convinced that we should conduct all our affairs, personal, national, and international, far more sanely than we do at present.
Bertrand Russell
No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor, but honest.
Bertrand Russell
Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
Bertrand Russell