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Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.

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
Something
Upon
Men
Religion
Inflicted
People
Fact
Evils
Evil
False
Feelings
Humility
Facts
Greatest
Certain
Quite
Come
Feeling

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them.
Bertrand Russell
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I went to Salt Lake City and the Mormons tried to convert me, but when I found they forbade tea and tobacco I thought it was no religion for me.
Bertrand Russell
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Education, and the life of the mind generally, is a matter in which individual initiative is the chief thing needed the function of the state should begin and end with insistence on some kind of education, and, if possible, a kind which promotes mental individualism, not a kind which happens to conform to the prejudices of government officials.
Bertrand Russell
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The supreme maxim in scientific philosophising is this: wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities.
Bertrand Russell
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At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love. I had not imagined there was anything so delicious in the world. From that moment until I was thirty-eight, mathematics was my chief interest and my chief source of happiness.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
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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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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Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines.
Bertrand Russell
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A man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if indeed such a man exists.
Bertrand Russell
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One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told I have not noticed it.
Bertrand Russell
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Every living thing is a sort of imperialist, seeking to transform as much as possible of its environment into itself . . . When we compare the (present) human population of the globe with . . . that of former times, we see that chemical imperialism has been . . . the main end to which human intelligence has been devoted.
Bertrand Russell
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Those who advocate common usage in philosophy sometimes speak in a manner that suggests the mystique of the 'common man.'
Bertrand Russell
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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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Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit.
Bertrand Russell
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If the State does not acquire supremacy over [vast private] enterprises, it becomes their puppet, and they become the real State.
Bertrand Russell
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What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry.
Bertrand Russell
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There may be no good reasons for very many opinions that are held with passion.
Bertrand Russell
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Some `advanced thinkers' are of the opinion that anyone who differs from the conventional opinion must be in the right. This is a delusion if it were not, truth would be easier to come by than it is.
Bertrand Russell