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Those who in principle oppose birth control are either incapable of arithmetic or else in favour of war, pestilence and famine as permanent features of human life.

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
Either
Favour
War
Incapable
Else
Features
Human
Permanent
Humans
Principle
Pestilence
Life
Birth
Arithmetic
Principles
Famine
Control
Oppose

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Children, after being limbs of Satan in traditional theology and mystically illuminated angels in the minds of educational reformers, have reverted to being little devils not theological demons inspired by the evil one, but scientific Freudian abominations inspired by the unconscious.
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No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.
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Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.
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A marriage is likely to be called happy if neither party ever expected to get much happiness out of it.
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In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.
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The use of force stands in need of control by a public neutral authority, in the interests of liberty no less than of justice. Within a nation, this public authority will naturally be the state in relations between nations, if the present anarchy is to cease, it will have to be some international parliament.
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We must be sceptical even of our scepticism.
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Look at me. Look at me is one of the fundamental desires of human heart.
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The taboo against nakedness is an obstacle to a decent attitude on the subject of sex.
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When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.
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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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One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.
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Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.
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One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told I have not noticed it.
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What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer
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In all the creative work that I have done, what has come first is a problem, a puzzle involving discomfort.
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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 best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.
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The man who pursues happiness wisely will aim at the possession of a number of subsidiary interests in addition to those central ones upon which his life is built.
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A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.
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