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Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics.

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
Needed
Possible
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Future
Less
Skeptics
Makes
Stoic
Life
Skeptic
Courage

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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... mathematical knowledge ... is, in fact, merely verbal knowledge. 3 means 2+1, and 4 means 3+1. Hence it follows (though the proof is long) that 4 means the same as 2+2. Thus mathematical knowledge ceases to be mysterious.
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The luxury to disparage freedom is the privilege of those who already possess it.
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I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness.
Bertrand Russell
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Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
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Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.
Bertrand Russell
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I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose.
Bertrand Russell
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Cruelty is, in theory, a perfectly adequate ground for divorce, but it may be interpreted so as to become absurd.
Bertrand Russell
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Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful therefore the worse they are performed, the better.
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To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
Bertrand Russell
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Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Bertrand Russell
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Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery, and in such a world hopes could only be irrational.
Bertrand Russell
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You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.
Bertrand Russell
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The human race may well become extinct before the end of the century. Speaking as a mathematician, I should say the odds are about three to one against survival.
Bertrand Russell
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Shakespeare . . . If he does not give you delight, you had better ignore him [if you can].
Bertrand Russell
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The first dogma which I came to disbelieve was that of free will. It seemed to me that all notions of matter were determined by the laws of dynamics and could not therefore be influenced by human wills.
Bertrand Russell
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To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind are prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error.
Bertrand Russell
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War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
Bertrand Russell
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It would now be technically possible to unify the world, abolish war and poverty altogether, if men desired their own happiness more than the misery of their enemies.
Bertrand Russell
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[Regarding] the convention that clergymen are more virtuous than other men. Any average selection of mankind, set apart and told that it excels the rest in virtue, must tend to sink below the average.
Bertrand Russell
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Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation.
Bertrand Russell