"We may often do as we please - but we cannot please as we please."
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Bertrand Russell quotes (page 47 of 60)
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"The first step in wisdom, as well as in morality, is to open the windows of the ego as wide as possible."
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"We know that the exercise of virtue should be its own reward, and it seems to follow that the enduring of it on the part of the patient should be its own punishment."
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"Curious learning not only makes unpleasant things less unpleasant but also makes pleasant things more pleasant."
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"Abstract work, if one wishes to do it well, must be allowed to destroy one's humanity; one raises a monument which is at the same time a tomb, in which, voluntarily, one slowly inters oneself."
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"There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere."
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"On the one hand, philosophy is to keep us thinking about things that we may come to know, and on the other hand to keep us modestly aware of how much that seems like knowledge isn't knowledge"
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"The road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work."
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"When it was first proposed to establish laboratories at Cambridge, Todhunter, the mathematician, objected that it was unnecessary for students to see experiments performed, since the results could be vouched for by their teachers, all of them of the highest character, and many of them clergymen of the Church of England."
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"I believe myself that romantic love is the source of the most intense delights that life has to offer. In the relation of a man and woman who love each other with passion and imagination and tenderness, there is something of inestimable value, to be ignorant of which is a great misfortune to any human being."
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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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"Science, by itself, cannot supply us with an ethic. It can show us how to achieve a given end, and it may show us that some ends cannot be achieved. But among ends that can be achieved our choice must be decided by other than purely scientific considerations. If a man were to say, "I hate the human race, and I think it would be a good thing if it were exterminated," we could say, "Well, my dear sir, let us begin the process with you." But this is hardly argument, and no amount of science could prove such a man mistaken."
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"It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living."
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"I am as drunk as a lord, but then, I am one, so what does it matter ?"
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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 twin conceptions of sin and vindictive punishment seem to be at the root of much that is most vigorous, both in religion and politics."
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"Modern American politicians have the same cowardice about denying an equally bloodthirsty even sillier god, Jehovah. None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of Homer really exist... I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line."
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"You must believe that you can help bring about a better world. A good society is produced only by good individuals, just as truly as a majority in a presidential election is produced by the votes of single electors."
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"The typical Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment; the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as possible."
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"A European who goes to New York and Chicago sees the future... when he goes to Asia he sees the past."
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