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The conception of the necessary unit of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of the imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the straitwaistcoated benevolent institution, which idealism palms off as the totality of being.

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
Conception
Unit
Resolve
Benevolent
Logic
Totality
Institutions
Rationality
Necessary
Palms
Poverty
Idealism
Imagination
Units
Resolves
Institution
Freer

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The key to happiness is accepting one unpleasant reality every day.
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Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.
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Science, by itself cannot, supply us with an ethic.
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When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
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Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.
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It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.
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William James used to preach the will-to-believe. For my part, I should wish to preach the will-to-doubt. None of our beliefs are quite true all at least have a penumbra of vagueness and error. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
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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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We know that the exercise of virtue should be its own reward, and it seems to follow that the enduring of it on the part of the patient should be its own punishment.
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We have almost reached the point where praise of rationality is held to mark a man as an old fogey regrettably surviving from a bygone age.
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Choose your parents wisely.
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An Honest politician will not be tolerated by a democracy unless he is very stupid ... because only a very stupid man can honestly share the prejudices of more than half the nation.
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What will be the good of the conquest of leisure and health, if no one remembers how to use them?
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Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.
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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.
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Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.
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Any pleasure that does no harm to other people is to be valued.
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If one lived for ever the joys of life would inevitably in the end lose their savour. As it is, they remain perennially fresh.
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Heretical views arise when the truth is uncertain, and it is only when the truth is uncertain that censorship is invoked.
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If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.
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