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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

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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
Firsts
Second
Third
Securing
First
Control
Thirds
Eugenics
Really
Shall
Misery
Regards
Way
Ways
Population
Minority
Powerful
Regard
Minorities
Society
Except
Stable
War
General
Wars
Three
Birth
Destructive
Infanticide

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All's well that ends well which is the epitaph I should put on my tombstone if I were the last man left alive.
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A world full of happiness is not beyond human power to create the obstacles imposed by inanimate nature are not insuperable. The real obstacles lie in the heart of man, and the cure for these is a firm hope, informed and fortified by thought.
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It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather that the hope of creatingfuture dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.
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We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.
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If a philosophy is to bring happiness it should be inspired by kindly feelings. Marx pretended that he wanted the happiness of the proletariat what he really wanted was the unhappiness of the bourgeois.
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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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The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.
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When we perceive any object of a familiar kind, much of what appears subjectively to be immediately given is really derived from past experience.
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War grows out of ordinary human nature.
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I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness.
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Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.
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If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody, and no unemployment — assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to use so much leisure.
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War doesn't determine who's right, it determines who's left
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An individual human existence should be like a river
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Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
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The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.
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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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The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and start From the slightest pain or equal foe.
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A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing anxiety.
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It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know-or care-about circumstances in the colonies.
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