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Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.

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
Trying
Never
Discourage
Thinking
Discouragement
Discouraging
Atheism
Succeed
Sure
Religion

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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A million million years gives us some time to prepare for the end . . . let us make the best of it.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
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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St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Bertrand Russell
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The essence of life is doing things for their own sakes.
Bertrand Russell
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A physicist looks for causes that does not necessarily imply that there are causes everywhere. A man may look for gold without assuming that there is gold everywhere if he finds gold, well and good, if he doesn't he's had bad luck. The same is true when the physicists look for causes.
Bertrand Russell
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Sir Arthur Eddington deduces religion from the fact that atoms do not obey the laws of mathematics. Sir James Jeans deduces it from the fact that they do.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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I am aware that many divines are far more marvelous than I am, and that I cannot wholly appreciate merits so far transcending my own. Nevertheless, even after making allowances under this head, I cannot but think that Omnipotence operating through all eternity might have produced something better.
Bertrand Russell
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Abstract work, if one wishes to do it well, must be allowed to destroy one's humanity one raises a monument which is at the same time a tomb, in which, voluntarily, one slowly inters oneself.
Bertrand Russell
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Life is just one cup of coffee after another, and don't look for anything else.
Bertrand Russell
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The true spirit of delight...is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.
Bertrand Russell
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Philosophy bakes no bread
Bertrand Russell
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I suggest to young professors that their first work should be written in a jargon only to be understood by the erudite few. With that behind them, they can ever after say what they have to say in a language 'understand of the people.'
Bertrand Russell
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Descartes, the father of modern philosophy ... would never-so he assures us-have been led to construct his philosophy if he had had only one teacher, for then he would have believed what he had been told but, finding that his professors disagreed with each other, he was forced to conclude that no existing doctrine was certain.
Bertrand Russell
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The human animal, like others, is adapted to a certain amount of struggle for life [and] the mere absence of effort from his life removes an essential ingredient of happiness. [. . .] He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
Bertrand Russell
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For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favorable and unfavorable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern all alike, I should say, result from paucity of experience.
Bertrand Russell
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When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us.
Bertrand Russell
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You could take up the line that some of the gnostics took up - a line which I often thought was a very plausible one - that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.
Bertrand Russell
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The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.
Bertrand Russell