Some part of life – perhaps the most important part – must be left to the spontaneous action of individual impulse, for where all is system there wil… - Bertrand Russell

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Engraved portrait of Bertrand Russell, facing left

Some part of life – perhaps the most important part – must be left to the spontaneous action of individual impulse, for where all is system there will be mental and spiritual death.

English
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About Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (May 18, 1872 – February 2, 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. In 1950, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature.

Biography information from Wikiquote · Portrait adapted from Wikimedia Commons, Bassano Ltd (Public domain / CC0)

Also Known As

Birth Name: Bertrand Arthur William Russell
Alternative Names: Bertrand Russell, 3rd Earl Russell Bertrand Russell, Earl Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell Russell

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Additional quotes by Bertrand Russell

The most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition. The experimental habit of mind is a difficult one for most people to maintain; indeed, the science of one generation has already become the tradition of the next...

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That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins — all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.

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