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The man who is unhappy will, as a rule, adopt an unhappy creed, while the man who is happy will adopt a happy creed each may attribute his happiness or unhappiness to his beliefs, while the real causation is the other way round.

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
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More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.
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To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.
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The pleasure of work is open to anyone who can develop some specialised skill, provided that he can get satisfaction from the exercise of his skill without demanding universal applause.
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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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I am aware that many divines are far more marvelous than I am, and that I cannot wholly appreciate merits so far transcending my own. Nevertheless, even after making allowances under this head, I cannot but think that Omnipotence operating through all eternity might have produced something better.
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Your writing is never as good as you hoped but never as bad as you feared.
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All traditional logic habitually assumes that precise symbols are being employed. It is therefore not applicable to this terrestial life but only to an imagined celestial existence... logic takes us nearer to heaven than other studies.
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Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle.
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The mind is a strange machine which can combine the materials offered to it in the most astonishing ways.
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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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Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
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At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love. I had not imagined there was anything so delicious in the world. From that moment until I was thirty-eight, mathematics was my chief interest and my chief source of happiness.
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Modern definitions of truth, such as those as pragmatism and instrumentalism, which are practical rather than contemplative, are inspired by industrialisation as opposed to aristocracy.
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Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos.
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Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.
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There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them and feel justified in lying to them.
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Shakespeare . . . If he does not give you delight, you had better ignore him [if you can].
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It is only through imagination that men become aware of what the world might be without it, ‘progress’ would become mechanical and trivial.
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A priori Logical propositions are such as can be known a priori without study of the actual world.
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Artists are on the average less happy than men of science.
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