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Common sense, however it tries, cannot avoid being surprised from time to time.
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
Cannot
Trying
Tries
Time
Surprised
Logic
Avoid
However
Common
Sense
More quotes by Bertrand Russell
Collective wisdom, alas, is no adequate substitute for the intelligence of individuals. Individuals who opposed received opinions have been the source of all progress, both moral and intellectual. They have been unpopular, as was natural.
Bertrand Russell
A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.
Bertrand Russell
Patriotism which has the quality of intoxication is a danger not only to its native land but to the world, and My country never wrong is an even more dangerous maxim than My country, right or wrong.
Bertrand Russell
The best practical advice I can give to the present generation is to practice the virtue which the Christians call love.
Bertrand Russell
There are three ways of securing a society that shall be stable as regards population. The first is that of birth control, the second that of infanticide or really destructive wars, and the third that of general misery except for a powerful minority.
Bertrand Russell
Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.
Bertrand Russell
There are two motives for reading a book one, that you enjoy it the other, that you can boast about it.
Bertrand Russell
Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines.
Bertrand Russell
Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.
Bertrand Russell
We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think in fact they do so.
Bertrand Russell
The psychology of adultery has been falsified by conventional morals, which assume, in monogamous countries, that attraction to one person cannot coexist with affection for another. Everybody knows that this is untrue.
Bertrand Russell
[Regarding] the convention that clergymen are more virtuous than other men. Any average selection of mankind, set apart and told that it excels the rest in virtue, must tend to sink below the average.
Bertrand Russell
Worry is a form of fear.
Bertrand Russell
Human nature being what it is, people will insist upon getting some pleasure out of life.
Bertrand Russell
I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.
Bertrand Russell
Machines have altered our way of life, but not our instincts. Consequently, there is maladjustment.
Bertrand Russell
In human relations one should penetrate to the core of loneliness in each person and speak to that.
Bertrand Russell
Love, children, and work, are the great sources of fertilizing contact between the individual and the rest of the world.
Bertrand Russell
Hatred of enemies is easier and more intense than love of friends. But from men who are more anxious to injure opponents than to benefit the world at large no great good is to be expected.
Bertrand Russell
True happiness for human beings is possible only to those who develop their godlike potentialities to the utmost.
Bertrand Russell
