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I think it would be just to say the most essential characteristic of mind is memory, using this word in its broadest sense to include every influence of past experience on present reactions.

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
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Essentials
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Using
Past
Memory
Broadest
Every
Influence
Characteristic
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More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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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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Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.
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To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
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One must expect a war between U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. which will begin with the total destruction of London. I think the war will last 30 years, and leave a world without civilised people, from which everything will have to build afresh - a process taking (say) 500 years.
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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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I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.
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The evolution of our spirit is blazed on the dark background of eternity by our individual wakes. Every person can, if he/she wishes, leave a more or less brilliant wake behind them.
Bertrand Russell
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[One] must look into hell before one has any right to speak of heaven.
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True happiness for human beings is possible only to those who develop their godlike potentialities to the utmost.
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Our beliefs are, however, often contrary to fact.
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Look at me. Look at me is one of the fundamental desires of human heart.
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The free intellect is the chief engine of human progress.
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Zeno was concerned with three problems... These are the problem of the infinitesimal, the infinite, and continuity.
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In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.
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It is no credit to the orthodox that they do not now believe all the absurdities that were believed 150 years ago. The gradual emasculation of the Christian doctrine has been effected in spite of the most vigorous resistance, and solely as the result of the onslaughts of freethinkers.
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The time has come, or is about to come, when only large-scale civil disobedience, which should be nonviolent, can save the populations from the universal death which their governments are preparing for them.
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Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
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Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos.
Bertrand Russell
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The luxury to disparage freedom is the privilege of those who already possess it.
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No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.
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