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What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.
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
Certainty
Knowledge
Really
Men
More quotes by Bertrand Russell
The time has come, or is about to come, when only large-scale civil disobedience, which should be nonviolent, can save the populations from the universal death which their governments are preparing for them.
Bertrand Russell
Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable, and praised when they are not praiseworthy.
Bertrand Russell
When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.
Bertrand Russell
[Kant] was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed imjplicitly in the maximx that he had imbibed at his mother's knee.
Bertrand Russell
I am paid by the word, so I always write the shortest words possible.
Bertrand Russell
Broadly speaking, Protestants like to be good and have invented theology in order to keep themselves so, whereas Catholics like to be bad and have invented theology in order to keep their neighbors good. Hence, the social character of Catholicism and the individual character of Protestantism.
Bertrand Russell
In science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it. ... In art nothing worth doing can be done without genius in science even a very moderate capacity can contribute to a supreme achievement.
Bertrand Russell
All the conditions of happiness are realized in the life of the man of science.
Bertrand Russell
When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God.
Bertrand Russell
The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Bertrand Russell
Through the greatness of the universe, which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.
Bertrand Russell
Zeno was concerned with three problems... These are the problem of the infinitesimal, the infinite, and continuity.
Bertrand Russell
Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason. Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety.
Bertrand Russell
A good man will never suspect his friends of shady actions: this is part of his goodness. A good man will never be suspected by the public of using his goodness to screen villains: this is part of his utility
Bertrand Russell
Look at me. Look at me is one of the fundamental desires of human heart.
Bertrand Russell
It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know-or care-about circumstances in the colonies.
Bertrand Russell
We must be skeptical even of our skepticism.
Bertrand Russell
The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.
Bertrand Russell
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
Only in thought is man a God in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.
Bertrand Russell