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Only in thought is man a God in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.

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
Circumstances
Desire
Action
Thought
Men
Circumstance
Slaves
Slave

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The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
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Your writing is never as good as you hoped but never as bad as you feared.
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Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety.
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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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Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.
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The key to happiness is accepting one unpleasant reality every day.
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If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full.
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You may, if you are an old-fashioned schoolmaster, wish to consider yourself full of universal benevolence and at the same time derive great pleasure from caning boys. In order to reconcile these two desires you have to persuade yourself that caning
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Many a marriage hardly differs from prostitution, except being harder to escape from.
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Clergymen almost necessarily fail in two ways as teachers of morals. They condemn acts which do no harm and they condone acts which do great harm.
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God and Satan alike are essentially human figures, the one a projection of ourselves, the other of our enemies.
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Another merit of home is that it preserves the diversity between individuals. If we were all alike, it might be convenient for the bureaucrat and the statistician, but it would be very dull, and would lead to a very unprogressive society.
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Dr. Arnold . . . the admired reformer of public schools, came across some cranks who thought it a mistake to flog boys. Anyone reading his outburst of furious indignation against this opinion will be forced to the conclusion that he enjoyed inflicting floggings.
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Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms no fire, no heroism, no intensity of though and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave.
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A widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
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One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
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Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
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The man who suffers from a sense of sin is suffering from a particular kind of self-love. In all this vast universe the thing that appears to him of most importance is that he himself should be virtuous. It is a grave defect in certain forms of traditional religion that they have encouraged this particular kind of self-absorption.
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This, however, is a passing nightmare in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.
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If we compare Europe with other continents, it is marked out as [another] persecuting continent.
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