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The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

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
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Indeed
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More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.
Bertrand Russell
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If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
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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Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business.
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The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty.
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In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces but in thought, in aspiration, we are free, free from our fellowmen, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the tyranny of death.
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Folly is perennial and yet the human race has survived.
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We are condemned to kill time, thus we die bit by bit. - Octavio Paz The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
Bertrand Russell
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This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible and is something which no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate.
Bertrand Russell
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Be isolated, be ignored, be attacked, be in doubt, be frightened, but do not be silenced.
Bertrand Russell
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Curious learning not only makes unpleasant things less unpleasant but also makes pleasant things more pleasant.
Bertrand Russell
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A life devoted to science is therefore a happy life, and its happiness is derived from the very best sources that are open to dwellers on this troubled and passionate planet.
Bertrand Russell
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From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization of Islam flourished. What was lost to christendom at this time was not lost to civilization, but quite the contrary.
Bertrand Russell
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Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.
Bertrand Russell
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Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.
Bertrand Russell
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No man treats a motorcar as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behavior to sin he does not say, 'You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.' He attempts to find out what is wrong and to set it right.
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Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation.
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Why repeat the old errors, if there are so many new errors to commit?
Bertrand Russell
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History is valuable, to begin with, because it is true and this, though not the whole of its value, is the foundation and condition of all the rest. That all knowledge, as such, is in some degree good, would appear to be at least probable and the knowledge of every historical fact possesses this element of goodness, even if it posses no other.
Bertrand Russell
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There are certain things that our age needs. It needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.
Bertrand Russell