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The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts.
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
Values
Meaning
Future
Habit
Whole
Value
Time
Unless
Thinking
Present
Pernicious
Bring
Forth
Looking
Parts
Lying
Lies
More quotes by Bertrand Russell
Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
Bertrand Russell
In detective stories . . . I alternately identify myself with the murderer and the huntsman-detective, but . . . there are those to which this vicarious outlet is too mild.
Bertrand Russell
It is not my prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.
Bertrand Russell
Cruelty is, in theory, a perfectly adequate ground for divorce, but it may be interpreted so as to become absurd.
Bertrand Russell
Change is scientific progress is ethical change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
Bertrand Russell
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Bertrand Russell
There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.
Bertrand Russell
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.
Bertrand Russell
Do not feel certain of anything.
Bertrand Russell
The sentiments of an adult are compounded of a kernel of instinct surrounded by a vast husk of education.
Bertrand Russell
Religion is based ... mainly upon fear ... fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.
Bertrand Russell
Science seems to be at war with itself.... Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false therefore it is false.
Bertrand Russell
Your writing is never as good as you hoped but never as bad as you feared.
Bertrand Russell
One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.
Bertrand Russell
How about Pithecanthropus Erectus? Was it really he who ate the apple? Or was it Homo Pekiniensis?
Bertrand Russell
Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation.
Bertrand Russell
I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy.
Bertrand Russell
A drop of water is not immortal it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution we should be inclined to be skeptical. In like manner we know that the brain is not immortal.
Bertrand Russell
Why repeat the old errors, if there are so many new errors to commit?
Bertrand Russell
A smile happens in a flash, but its memory can last a lifetime.
Bertrand Russell
