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The doctrine (of) maintaining that the language of daily life, with words used in their ordinary meanings, suffices for philosophy . . . I find myself totally unable to accept . . . . Because it makes almost inevitable the perpetuation amongst philosophers of the muddle-headedness they have taken over from common sense.

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
Life
Taken
Doctrine
Muddle
Common
Daily
Meanings
Words
Totally
Amongst
Language
Accept
Philosophers
Sense
Ordinary
Maintaining
Makes
Accepting
Unable
Headedness
Used
Philosophy
Inevitable
Perpetuation
Find
Almost
Philosopher
Suffices

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One must expect a war between U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. which will begin with the total destruction of London. I think the war will last 30 years, and leave a world without civilised people, from which everything will have to build afresh - a process taking (say) 500 years.
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The essence of education is that it is a change effected in the organism to satisfy the operator.
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In detective stories . . . I alternately identify myself with the murderer and the huntsman-detective, but . . . there are those to which this vicarious outlet is too mild.
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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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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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True happiness for human beings is possible only to those who develop their godlike potentialities to the utmost.
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Everybody can do something toward creating in his own environment kindly feelings rather than anger, reasonableness rather than hysteria, happiness rather than misery.
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Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
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I consider the official Catholic attitude on divorce, birth control, and censorship exceedingly dangerous to mankind.
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Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
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It is only through imagination that men become aware of what the world might be without it, ‘progress’ would become mechanical and trivial.
Bertrand Russell
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It is not known why the Lord made the human body as he did, since one might suppose that omnipotence could have made it such as would not have shocked the nice people.
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A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.
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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
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The human animal, like others, is adapted to a certain amount of struggle for life [and] the mere absence of effort from his life removes an essential ingredient of happiness. [. . .] He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
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Belief in a Divine mission is one of the many forms of certainty that have afflicted the human race.
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I have come to realize that an early symptom of approaching mental illness is the belief that one's work is terribly important. If you consider your work very important you should take a day off.
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It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians.
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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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If you question any candid person who is no longer young, he is very likely to tell you that, having tasted life in this world, he has no wish to begin again as a new boy in another.
Bertrand Russell