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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
Thinking
Wise
Trouble
Purpose
Times
Night
Nothing
Things
Troubles
Men
Thinks

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Common sense, however it tries, cannot avoid being surprised from time to time.
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Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
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Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics.
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Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.
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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.
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Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms no fire, no heroism, no intensity of though and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave.
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Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence, no matter what orthodoxy it may be.
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Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
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Happiness, as is evident, depends partly upon external circumstances and partly upon oneself.
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There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.
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It appeared to me that the dignity of which human existence is capable is not attainable by devotion to the mechanism of life , and that unless contemplation of eternal things is preserved, mankind will become no better than well-fed pigs.
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Suppose atomic bombs had reduced the population of the world to one brother and sister should they let the human race die out?
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A man of Seville is shaved by the Barber of Seville if and only if the man does not shave himself. Does the barber shave himself?
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Philosophy bakes no bread
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We love our habits more than our income, often more than our life.
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The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.
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A million million years gives us some time to prepare for the end . . . let us make the best of it.
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The main thing needed to make men happy is intelligence.
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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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The human heart as modern civilization has made it is more prone to hatred than to friendship. And it is prone to hatred because it is dissatisfied.
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