Bertrand Russell Quotes
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Friends,
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A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.
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To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.
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A religious creed differs from a scientific theory in claiming to embody eternal and absolutely certain truth, whereas science is always tentative, expecting that modification in its present theories will sooner or later be found necessary, and aware that its method is one which is logically incapable of arriving at a complete and final demonstration.
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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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Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
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In a logically perfect language, there will be one word and no more for every simple object, and everything that is not simple will be expressed by a combination of words, by a combination derived, of course, from the words for the simple things that enter in, one word for each simple component.
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If the Communists conquered the world, it would be very unpleasant for a while, but not forever. But if the human race is wiped out, that is the end.
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The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
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We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think – in fact they do so.
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First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.
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The state is primarily an organization for killing foreigners.
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It's not the experience that happens to you: it's what you do with the experience that happens to you.
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Competition for power is of two sorts: between organizations, and between individuals for leadership within an organization.
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The degree of one's emotion varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts – the less you know the hotter you get.
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In the welter of conflicting fanaticisms, one of the few unifying forces is scientific truthfulness, by which I mean the habit of basing our beliefs upon observations and inferences as impersonal, and as much divested of local and temperamental bias, as is possible for human beings.
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I shall keep it the manuscript by me until the end of May for purposes of revision, and of adding malicious foot-notes.
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A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.
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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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...You could take up the line that some of the gnostics took up – a line which I often thought was a very plausible one – that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.
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No rules, however wise, are a substitute for affection and tact.
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Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
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The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.
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Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.