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"The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history."
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"In the parlor was a huge camera on wheels like the ones used in public parks, and the backdrop of a marine twilight, painted with homemade paints, and the walls papered with pictures of children at memorable moments: the first Communion, the bunny costume, the happy birthday. Year after year, during contemplative pauses on afternoons of chess, Dr. Urbino had seen the gradual covering over of the walls, and he had often thought with a shudder of sorrow that in the gallery of casual portraits lay the germ of the future of the city, governed and corrupted by those unknown children, where note even the ashes of his glory would remain."

"History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies."

"Nothing is long ago in an archive, my dear. In the records we treat the dead as same as the living. that's the whole point of keeping papers. It doesn't matter if it's a hundred years or only a few weeks. It's all filed away, fresh as the day it went under the covers."

"One would have to have completely forgotten the history of science so as to not remember that the desire to know nature has had the most constant and the happiest influence on the development of mathematics."

"The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men."

"While tributes to Americans who had lost their lives in battle had been held in a number of towns across the nation, one of the more well-known stories about the beginnings of Memorial Day is the story about General John Logan."
Explore more quotes by Bertrand Russell

"In adolescence, I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was restrained by the desire to know more mathematics."

"You all know the argument from design: everything in the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the world, and if the world was ever so little different, we could not manage to live in it. That is the argument from design. It sometimes takes a rather curious form; for instance, it is argued that rabbits have white tails in order to be easy to shoot. I do not know how rabbits would view that application."

"One obvious palliative of the evils of democracy in its present form would be to encourage much more publicity and initiative on the part of civil servants. They ought to have the right, and, on occasion, the duty, to frame Bills in their own names, and set forth publicly the arguments in their favor."

"I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex."

"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence."

"Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?"

"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."

"Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires."

"Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths."
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