Şi, vorbind mai general, oricare ţi-ar fi linia în viaţă, dacă constaţi că alţii nu-ţi preţuiesc aptitudinile la fel de mult ca tine, nu fi prea sigur că greşeala e de partea lor. Altminteri poţi aluneca lesne în credinţa că există o conspiraţie care urmăreşte să împiedice recunoaşterea meritelor tale, iar această credinţă va fi aproape sigur pentru tine o sursă de nefericire. Recunoaşterea că nu eşti înzestrat cu calităţi atât de eminente cum ai sperat poate fi pe moment mai dureroasă, dar va fi o durere care are un sfârşit, după care o viaţă fericită devine din nou posibilă.
Bertrand Russell, În căutarea fericirii
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JEAN-CLAUDE CARRIèRE De ce te face asta la fel de rau ca oricare vampir? Nu exista gradatii ale raului? E raul cumva o pr... ANNE RICE Isaac Asimov ofera o ilustrare dramatica: este ca si cum toata materia din univers ar fi un bob de n... RICHARD DAWKINS Cum de inima mea poate - cum mai poate, cum mai poate, repetă, pufăind din havană. Tânjind în s... VIRGINIA WOOLF Este incredibil cât de completă este iluzia care ne face să credem că frumuseţea este în gener... LEO TOLSTOY …iubirea mea, nu-ți pot spune cât de recunoscătoare sunt pentru mica noastră infinitate. N-aș... JOHN GREEN Dacă oamenii ar fi fost ploaie, eu aș fi fost o burniță și ea ar fi fost un uragan. JOHN GREEN In definitiv, cu cat vei ridica un zid mai inalt in jurul tau cu atat va fi mai bun cel care-l va sa... TUDOR CHIRILă Când toate zilele sunt egale înseamnă că oamenii au încetat să vadă lucrurile bune care au ap... PAULO COELHO Să ai timp să gândești și să-ți dai frâu liber imaginației în societatea prezentă, care t... CRISTIAN RăDUță Tristetea, ca si suferinta, ne revela existenta, deoarece în ele avem în constiinta separatia noas... EMIL M. CIORAN Iata deci cugetarea mea profunda pe ziua de azi: e pentru prima oara cand intalnesc pe cineva care c... MURIEL BARBERY Să nu te cerţi cu oamenii mai mult decât cu tine însuţi. LUCIAN BLAGA
More Bertrand Russell, În căutarea fericirii
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BERTRAND RUSSELL A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not ... BERTRAND RUSSELL The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but... BERTRAND RUSSELL There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin ... BERTRAND RUSSELL All human activity is prompted by desire. BERTRAND RUSSELL Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When ... BERTRAND RUSSELL The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. .... BERTRAND RUSSELL In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the... BERTRAND RUSSELL One of the signs of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly impor... BERTRAND RUSSELL Hatred of enemies is easier and more intense than love of friends. But from men who are more anxious... BERTRAND RUSSELL In America everybody is of opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he ... BERTRAND RUSSELL We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from w... BERTRAND RUSSELL One of the most interesting and harmful delusions to which men and nations can be subjected is that ... BERTRAND RUSSELL No one gossips about other people's secret virtues. BERTRAND RUSSELL The fundamental defect with fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them. BERTRAND RUSSELL Folly is perennial, yet the human race has survived. BERTRAND RUSSELL If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. BERTRAND RUSSELL An individual human existence should be like a river BERTRAND RUSSELL Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up frie... BERTRAND RUSSELL Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate. BERTRAND RUSSELL Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which morali... BERTRAND RUSSELL Conventional people are roused to fury by departures from convention, largely because they regard su... BERTRAND RUSSELL What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that ... BERTRAND RUSSELL Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are ha... BERTRAND RUSSELL Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this d... BERTRAND RUSSELL An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had... BERTRAND RUSSELL There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have ... BERTRAND RUSSELL If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintell... BERTRAND RUSSELL A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it. BERTRAND RUSSELL In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long... BERTRAND RUSSELL A process which led from the amoebae to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress ... BERTRAND RUSSELL Change is one thing, progress is another. Change is scientific, progress is ethical; change is indub... BERTRAND RUSSELL The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either w... BERTRAND RUSSELL Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent. BERTRAND RUSSELL One must care about a world one will not see. BERTRAND RUSSELL Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one. BERTRAND RUSSELL The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he fi... BERTRAND RUSSELL When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also add that some things are more nearly... BERTRAND RUSSELL Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by... BERTRAND RUSSELL The commonest objection to birth control is that it is against nature. BERTRAND RUSSELL What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite. BERTRAND RUSSELL Most people would rather die than think: many do. BERTRAND RUSSELL To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. BERTRAND RUSSELL Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power. BERTRAND RUSSELL Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginar... BERTRAND RUSSELL Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the poss... BERTRAND RUSSELL Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They're what make the... BERTRAND RUSSELL In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but... BERTRAND RUSSELL Sin is geographical. BERTRAND RUSSELL Watch your thoughts, for they become words.Watch your words, for they become actions.Watch your acti... BERTRAND RUSSELL I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no lon... BERTRAND RUSSELL Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation. It has nothing to d... BERTRAND RUSSELL To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very fe... BERTRAND RUSSELL Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodi... BERTRAND RUSSELL Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires BERTRAND RUSSELL Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory... BERTRAND RUSSELL The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way BERTRAND RUSSELL What hunger is in relation to food, zest is in relation to life BERTRAND RUSSELL Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, pain of love lasts a lifetime. BERTRAND RUSSELL There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life w... BERTRAND RUSSELL The qualities most needed are charity and tolerance, not some form of fanatical faith such as is off... BERTRAND RUSSELL One should respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of p... BERTRAND RUSSELL The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd;... BERTRAND RUSSELL Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know. BERTRAND RUSSELL An educator should think of a child as a garderner thinks of a plant, as something to be made to gro... BERTRAND RUSSELL The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible. BERTRAND RUSSELL Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful, and valued because they confer power; they are ... BERTRAND RUSSELL Law in origin was merely a codification of the power of dominant groups, and did not aim at anything... BERTRAND RUSSELL To expect a personality to survive the disintegration of the brain is like expecting a cricket club ... BERTRAND RUSSELL We are all prone to the malady of the introvert who, with the manifold spectacle of the world spread... BERTRAND RUSSELL A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it. BERTRAND RUSSELL Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and ... BERTRAND RUSSELL To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead. BERTRAND RUSSELL A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not... BERTRAND RUSSELL We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and a... BERTRAND RUSSELL There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. BERTRAND RUSSELL [T]he infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they inven... BERTRAND RUSSELL Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought o... BERTRAND RUSSELL So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. BERTRAND RUSSELL There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate gov... BERTRAND RUSSELL The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays ... BERTRAND RUSSELL Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of ... BERTRAND RUSSELL Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination. BERTRAND RUSSELL This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened ... BERTRAND RUSSELL Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape f... BERTRAND RUSSELL Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt ... BERTRAND RUSSELL Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can ... BERTRAND RUSSELL Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying t... BERTRAND RUSSELL I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with... BERTRAND RUSSELL Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. BERTRAND RUSSELL The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and... BERTRAND RUSSELL War does not determine who is right - only who is left. BERTRAND RUSSELL Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface rela... BERTRAND RUSSELL Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know. BERTRAND RUSSELL The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. BERTRAND RUSSELL Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons. BERTRAND RUSSELL Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ide... BERTRAND RUSSELL Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with o... BERTRAND RUSSELL It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which... BERTRAND RUSSELL Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the i... BERTRAND RUSSELL The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts. BERTRAND RUSSELL