In regard to the past, where ...

In regard to the past, where contemplation is not obscured by desire and the need for action, we see, more clearly than in the lives about us, the value for good and evil, of the aims men have pursued and the means they have adopted. It is good, from time to time, to view the present as already past, and to examine what elements it contains that will add to the world\'s store of permanent possessions, that will live and give life when we and all our generation have perished.
In regard to the past, where contemplation is not obscured by desire and the need for action, we see, more clearly than in the lives about us, the value for good and evil, of the aims men have pursued and the means they have adopted. It is good, from time to time, to view the present as already past, and to examine what elements it contains that will add to the world's store of permanent possessions, that will live and give life when we and all our generation have perished.
 Bertrand Russell

Quotes from the same author

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
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 Bertrand Russell
We may say, in a broad way, that Greek philosophy down to Aristotle expresses the mentality appropriate to the City State; that Stoicism is appropriate to a cosmopolitan despotism; that stochastic philosophy is an intellectual expression of the Church as an organization; that philosophy since Descartes, or at any rate since Locke, tends to embody the prejudices of the commercial middle class; and that Marxism and Fascism are the philosophies appropriate to the modern industrial state.
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 Bertrand Russell
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
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 Bertrand Russell
The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we live.
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 Bertrand Russell
Real life is, to most men, a long second best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.
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 Bertrand Russell