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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
Bring
Forth
Looking
Parts
Lying
Lies
Values
Meaning
Future
Habit
Whole
Value
Time
Unless
Thinking
Present
Pernicious
More quotes by Bertrand Russell
The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.
Bertrand Russell
Each act of cruelty is eternally a part of the universe nothing that happens later can make that act good rather than bad, or can confer perfection on the whole of which it is a part.
Bertrand Russell
Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.
Bertrand Russell
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
Bertrand Russell
Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
Bertrand Russell
Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth.
Bertrand Russell
Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful therefore the worse they are performed, the better.
Bertrand Russell
Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.
Bertrand Russell
I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.
Bertrand Russell
It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians.
Bertrand Russell
For my part, the thing I would wish to obtain from money would be leisure with security. But what the typical modern man desires to get with it is more money, with a view to ostentation, splendour, and the outshining of those who have hitherto been his equals.
Bertrand Russell
Logic must no more admit a unicorn than zoology can.
Bertrand Russell
A European who goes to New York and Chicago sees the future... when he goes to Asia he sees the past.
Bertrand Russell
Literature is inexhaustible, with every book a homage to infinity
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
Protagoras did not know if the gods exist, but he held in any case they ought to be worshiped. Philosophy, according to him, had nothing edifying to teach, and for the survival of morals we must rely upon the thoughtlessness of the majority and their willingness to believe what they had been taught.
Bertrand Russell
A smile happens in a flash, but its memory can last a lifetime.
Bertrand Russell
Common sense, however it tries, cannot avoid being surprised from time to time.
Bertrand Russell
(on A History of Western Philosophy) I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if, indeed, such man exists.
Bertrand Russell
Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.
Bertrand Russell