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Dread of disaster makes everybody act in the very way that increases the disaster. Psychologically the situation is analogous to that of people trampled to death when there is a panic in a theatre caused by a cry of `Fire!'.

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
People
Cry
Analogous
Increase
Psychologically
Fire
Increases
Everybody
Dread
Situation
Panic
Death
Caused
Makes
Disaster
Way
Theatre
Trampled

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In emancipation from the fears that beset the slave of circumstance he will experience a profound joy, and through all the vicissitudes of his outward life he will remain in the depths of his being a happy man.
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Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the government.
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Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
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Folly is perennial and yet the human race has survived.
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A good man will never suspect his friends of shady actions: this is part of his goodness. A good man will never be suspected by the public of using his goodness to screen villains: this is part of his utility
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Choose your parents wisely.
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We must be sceptical even of our scepticism.
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In spite of Death, the mark and seal of the parental control, Man is yet free, during his brief years, to examine, to criticise, to know, and in imagination to create. To him alone, in the world with which he is acquainted, this freedom belongs and in this lies his superiority to the resistless forces that control his outward life.
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If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
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What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.
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The first essential character [of civilization], I should say, is forethought. This, indeed, is what mainly distinguishes men from brutes and adults from children.
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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.
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Bad philosophers may have a certain influence good philosophers, never.
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Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
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Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.
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Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction.
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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.
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Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.
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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.
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What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy.
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