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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.

Bertrand Russell

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Bertrand Russell
Age: 97 †
Born: 1872
Born: May 18
Died: 1970
Died: February 2
Analytic Philosopher
Autobiographer
Epistemologist
Essayist
Journalist
Logician
Mathematician
Metaphysician
Peace Activist
Philosopher
Tryleg
Bertrand Arthur William Russell
Russell
Bertrand Russell
3rd Earl Russell
Bertrand Russell
Earl Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell
3rd Earl Russell
Made
Destruction
Profoundest
Love
Morality
Brotherly
Mass
Hippie
Teach
Persecution
Religion
Religions
Means
Insight
Used
Scientific
Mean
Excuse

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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We must be sceptical even of our scepticism.
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I do not think any reasonable person can doubt that in India, China and Japan, if the knowledge of birth control existed, the birthrate would fall very rapidly
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Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery, and in such a world hopes could only be irrational.
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Love cannot exists as a duty to tell a child that it ought to love its parents and its brother and sisters is utterly useless, if not worse.
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I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.
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Education, which was at first made universal in order that all might be able to read and write, has been found capable of serving quite other purposes. By instilling nonsense it unifies populations and generates collective enthusiasm.
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Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
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it [is] possible to suppose that, if Russia is allowed to have peace, an amazing industrial development may take place, making Russia a rival of the United States.
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To write tragedy, a man must feel tragedy. To feel tragedy, a man must be aware of the world in which he lives. Not only with his mind, but with his blood and sinews.
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The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.
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[Kant] was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed imjplicitly in the maximx that he had imbibed at his mother's knee.
Bertrand Russell
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God and Satan alike are essentially human figures, the one a projection of ourselves, the other of our enemies.
Bertrand Russell
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The man who is unhappy will, as a rule, adopt an unhappy creed, while the man who is happy will adopt a happy creed each may attribute his happiness or unhappiness to his beliefs, while the real causation is the other way round.
Bertrand Russell
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Even if we could be certain that one of the world's religions were perfectly true, given the sheer number of conflicting faiths on offer, every believer should expect damnation purely as a matter of probability.
Bertrand Russell
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A drop of water is not immortal it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution we should be inclined to be skeptical. In like manner we know that the brain is not immortal.
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Mysticism is, in essence, little more than a certain intensity and depth of feeling in regard to what is believed about the universe.
Bertrand Russell
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All serious innovation is only rendered possible by some accident enabling unpopular persons to survive.
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Perhaps the nuclear physicists have come so near to the ultimate secrets that He thinks it time to bring their activities to a stop. And what simpler method could He devise than to let them carry their ingenuity to the point where they exterminate the human race?
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Zeno was concerned with three problems... These are the problem of the infinitesimal, the infinite, and continuity.
Bertrand Russell
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The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.
Bertrand Russell