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Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.

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
Able
Thoughts
Unable
Many
Answers
Customs
Philosophy
Possibilities
Doubt
Tyranny
Dogmatism
Though
Certainty
Enlarge
Free
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Tell
Answer
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True
Possibility
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A man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if indeed such a man exists.
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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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Grasshopper always wrong in argument with chicken.
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What was exciting in the Victorian Age, would leave a man of franker epoch quite unmoved. The more prudes restrict the permissible degree of sexual appeal, the less is required to make such an appeal effective.
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One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his or her work important.
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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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What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.
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The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
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One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.
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Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.
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Human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those who seem least to demand it.
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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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Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.
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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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From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization of Islam flourished. What was lost to christendom at this time was not lost to civilization, but quite the contrary.
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3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is a paradox as is a paradox why the number 1 is not prime if it has no other divisors besides himself.
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[There has been] every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.
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All definite knowledge - so I should contend - belongs to science all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack by both sides this No Man's Land is philosophy.
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Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.
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Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.
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