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I have come to realize that an early symptom of approaching mental illness is the belief that one's work is terribly important. If you consider your work very important you should take a day off.

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
Come
Mental
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Consider
Important
Early
Work
Teaching
Symptom
Realize
Approaching
Realizing
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Belief
Terribly
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More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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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.
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Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos.
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The difficulty is old, but none the less real. An omnipotent being who created a world containing evil not due to sin must Himself be at least partially evil.
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A widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
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Next to worry probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy.
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Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
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Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
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I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose.
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If two hitherto rival football teams, under the influence of brotherly love, decided to co-operate in placing the football first beyond one goal and then beyond the other, no one's happiness would be increased
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With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway about the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
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Love, children, and work, are the great sources of fertilizing contact between the individual and the rest of the world.
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Half the useful work in the world consists of combating the harmful work.
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An individual human existence should be like a river
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You could take up the line that some of the gnostics took up - a line which I often thought was a very plausible one - that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.
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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.
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Science can teach us, and I think our hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supporters, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make the world a fit place to live.
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The whole of theology, in regard to hell no less than to heaven, takes it for granted that Man is what is of most importance in the Universe of created beings. Since all theologians are men, this postulate has met with little opposition.
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Broadly speaking, we are in the middle of a race between human skill as a means and human folly as an end.
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Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.
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The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.
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