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The essence of good manners consists in making it clear that one has no wish to hurt. When it is clearly necessary to hurt, it must be done in such a way as to make it evident that the necessity is felt to be regrettable.

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
Make
Hurt
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Consists
Making
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Felt
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To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
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It is obviously possible that what we call waking life may only be an unusual and persistent nightmare.
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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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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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Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
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For some reason which I have failed to understand, many people like the system [scientific totalitarianism] when it is Russian but disliked the very same system when it was German. I am compelled to think that this is due to the power of labels these people like whatever is labelled ‘Left’ without examining whether the label has any justification.
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The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.
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The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
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St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
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Hatred of enemies is easier and more intense than love of friends. But from men who are more anxious to injure opponents than to benefit the world at large no great good is to be expected.
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Collective wisdom, alas, is no adequate substitute for the intelligence of individuals. Individuals who opposed received opinions have been the source of all progress, both moral and intellectual. They have been unpopular, as was natural.
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it [is] possible to suppose that, if Russia is allowed to have peace, an amazing industrial development may take place, making Russia a rival of the United States.
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Answering questions is a major part of sex education. Two rules cover the ground. First, always give a truthful answer to a question secondly, regard sex knowledge as exactly like any other knowledge.
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The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points.
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Undoubtedly the desire for food has been and still is one of the main causes of political events.
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For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favorable and unfavorable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern all alike, I should say, result from paucity of experience.
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The key to happiness is accepting one unpleasant reality every day.
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It will be found, as men grow more tolerant in their instincts, that many uniformities now insisted upon are useless and even harmful.
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[Kant] was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed imjplicitly in the maximx that he had imbibed at his mother's knee.
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History is valuable, to begin with, because it is true and this, though not the whole of its value, is the foundation and condition of all the rest. That all knowledge, as such, is in some degree good, would appear to be at least probable and the knowledge of every historical fact possesses this element of goodness, even if it posses no other.
Bertrand Russell