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The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so at other times he thinks about other things, or, if it is night, about nothing at all.

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
Night
Nothing
Things
Troubles
Men
Thinks
Thinking
Wise
Trouble
Purpose
Times

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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There are certain things that our age needs. It needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.
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Human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those who seem least to demand it.
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It is the things for which there is no evidence that are believed with passion.
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Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.
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Only in thought is man a God in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.
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One must care about a world one will not see.
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Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.
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To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
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I've always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel.
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Real life is, to most men, a long second best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.
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Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning
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The luxury to disparage freedom is the privilege of those who already possess it.
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Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake.
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No man treats a motorcar as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behavior to sin he does not say, 'You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.' He attempts to find out what is wrong and to set it right.
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Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.
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Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies, and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him.
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(on A History of Western Philosophy) I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if, indeed, such man exists.
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Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.
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Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
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Americans need rest, but do not know it. I believe this to be a large part of the explanation of the crime wave in the United States.
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