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A fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic institutions impossible.

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
Democracy
Impossible
Belief
Makes
Fanatical
Institutions
Democratic

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Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.
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When the journey from means to end is not too long, the means themselves are enjoyed if the end is ardently desired.
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We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
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No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
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A man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if indeed such a man exists.
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To fear love is to fear life.
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Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
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To think I have spent my life on absolute muck.
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Each act of cruelty is eternally a part of the universe nothing that happens later can make that act good rather than bad, or can confer perfection on the whole of which it is a part.
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Fervent religious believers sacrifice pleasures of the body, but instead enjoy pleasures of the mind, including the joy of knowing that those men who didn't follow their religion would be tortured for eternity.
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Do not feel certain of anything.
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Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.
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To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind are prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error.
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Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.
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The Church no longer contends that knowledge is in itself sinful, though it did so in its palmy days but the acquisition of knowledge, even though not sinful, is dangerous, since it may lead to pride of intellect, and hence to a questioning of the Christian dogma.
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I did not know I loved you until I heard myself telling so, for one instance I thought, Good God, what have I said? and then I knew it was true.
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