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Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit.

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
Privilege
Institutions
Habit
Comfortable
Thought
Merciless
Subversive
Established

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Always remember that true happiness is not in getting what you want, but wanting what you already have. He who dies with the most toys is still dead. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
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One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
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Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
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It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
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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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The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more amazing becomes what human beings have achieved.
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For the learning of every virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgment the best discipline is philosophy.
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I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.
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The fundamental principle in the analysis of propositions containing descriptions is this: Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.
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Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.
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Shakespeare . . . If he does not give you delight, you had better ignore him [if you can].
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The human race may well become extinct before the end of the century. Speaking as a mathematician, I should say the odds are about three to one against survival.
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Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
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War grows out of ordinary human nature.
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Happiness, as is evident, depends partly upon external circumstances and partly upon oneself.
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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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The teacher, like the artist, the philosopher, and the man of letters, can only perform his work adequately if he feels himself to be an individual directed by an inner creative impulse, not dominated and fettered by an outside authority.
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We love our habits more than our income, often more than our life.
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Our individual life is brief, and perhaps the whole life of mankind will be brief if measured in astronomical scale
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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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