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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
Action
Thought
Men
Circumstance
Slaves
Slave
Circumstances
Desire

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Meantime, the world in which we exist has other aims. But it will pass away, burnt up in the fire of its own hot passions and from its ashes will spring a new and younger world, full of fresh hope, woth the light of morning in its eyes.
Bertrand Russell
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There is an element of the busybody in our conception of virtue: unless a man makes himself a nuisance to a great many people, we do not think he can be an exceptionally good man.
Bertrand Russell
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In science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it. ... In art nothing worth doing can be done without genius in science even a very moderate capacity can contribute to a supreme achievement.
Bertrand Russell
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Is the set of all sets which are not members of themselves a member of itself?
Bertrand Russell
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dont let the old break you let the love make you
Bertrand Russell
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You could take up the line that some of the gnostics took up - a line which I often thought was a very plausible one - that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.
Bertrand Russell
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Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it.
Bertrand Russell
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The essence of education is that it is a change effected in the organism to satisfy the operator.
Bertrand Russell
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A smile happens in a flash, but its memory can last a lifetime.
Bertrand Russell
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Drunkenness is temporary suicide.
Bertrand Russell
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When it was first proposed to establish laboratories at Cambridge, Todhunter, the mathematician, objected that it was unnecessary for students to see experiments performed, since the results could be vouched for by their teachers, all of them of the highest character, and many of them clergymen of the Church of England.
Bertrand Russell
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What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.
Bertrand Russell
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There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire - poison and antidote.
Bertrand Russell
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In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces but in thought, in aspiration, we are free, free from our fellowmen, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the tyranny of death.
Bertrand Russell
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Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves.
Bertrand Russell
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In considering irregular appearances, there are certain very natural mistakes which must be avoided.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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Even in civilized mankind faint traces of monogamous instinct can be perceived.
Bertrand Russell
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Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell