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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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Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
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Dread of disaster makes everybody act in the very way that increases the disaster.
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The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress.
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All the important human advances that we know of since historical times began have been due to individuals of whom the majority faced virulent public opposition.
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The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.
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Half the useful work in the world consists of combating the harmful work.
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Next to worry probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy.
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One of the most interesting and harmful delusions to which men and nations can be subjected is that of imagining themselves special instruments of the Divine Will.
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Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
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It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians.
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Freedom in education has many aspects. There is first of all freedom to learn or not to learn. Then there is freedom as to what to learn. And in later education there is freedom of opinion.
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To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
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Protagoras did not know if the gods exist, but he held in any case they ought to be worshiped. Philosophy, according to him, had nothing edifying to teach, and for the survival of morals we must rely upon the thoughtlessness of the majority and their willingness to believe what they had been taught.
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Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
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The Eugenic Society . . . is perpetually bewailing the fact that wage-earners breed faster than middle-class people.
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Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.
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Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
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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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The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more amazing becomes what human beings have achieved.
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