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To the primitive mind, everything is either friendly or hostile but experience has shown that friendliness and hostility are not the conceptions by which the world is to be understood.

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
Conception
Friendly
Understood
Friendliness
Either
Conceptions
Experience
Hostility
Everything
Hostile
Mind
Shown
World
Primitive

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Cruelty is, in theory, a perfectly adequate ground for divorce, but it may be interpreted so as to become absurd.
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More important than the curriculum is the question of the methods of teaching and the spirit in which the teaching is given
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Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.
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In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
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A widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
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All the conditions of happiness are realized in the life of the man of science.
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Moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modern world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda.
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Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.
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William James used to preach the will-to-believe. For my part, I should wish to preach the will-to-doubt. None of our beliefs are quite true all at least have a penumbra of vagueness and error. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
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Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.
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What was exciting in the Victorian Age, would leave a man of franker epoch quite unmoved. The more prudes restrict the permissible degree of sexual appeal, the less is required to make such an appeal effective.
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The difficulty is old, but none the less real. An omnipotent being who created a world containing evil not due to sin must Himself be at least partially evil.
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Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence, no matter what orthodoxy it may be.
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For the learning of every virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgment the best discipline is philosophy.
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Cynicism such as one finds very frequently among the most highly educated young men and women of the West, results from the combination of comfort and powerlessness.
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Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
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Dr. Arnold . . . the admired reformer of public schools, came across some cranks who thought it a mistake to flog boys. Anyone reading his outburst of furious indignation against this opinion will be forced to the conclusion that he enjoyed inflicting floggings.
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Heretical views arise when the truth is uncertain, and it is only when the truth is uncertain that censorship is invoked.
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Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.
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