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"Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure."
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"I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world."

"No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision."

"Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles."

"For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery."

"There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you."

"In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population."

"On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does."

"Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated."

"There are no doubts that western governments are willfully inducing radiation sickness into segments of their city populations."

"Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us."
Explore more quotes by Bertrand Russell

"Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias."

"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."

"Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction."

"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."

"A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known."

"Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear."

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."

"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid ... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man."

"The problem of political theory is how to combine that degree of individual initiative which is necessary for progress, with the degree of social cohesion which is necessary for survival."
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