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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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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
Often
Makes
Noticed
Thing
Virtuous
Men
Attack
Atheism
Told
Wrong
Religion

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Cruel men believe in a cruel god and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly god, and they would be kindly in any case.
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Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery, and in such a world hopes could only be irrational.
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If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.
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The Church no longer contends that knowledge is in itself sinful, though it did so in its palmy days but the acquisition of knowledge, even though not sinful, is dangerous, since it may lead to pride of intellect, and hence to a questioning of the Christian dogma.
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A widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
Bertrand Russell
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All definite knowledge - so I should contend - belongs to science all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack by both sides this No Man's Land is philosophy.
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I used, when I was younger, to take my holidays walking. I would cover 25 miles a day, and when the evening came I had no need of anything to keep me from boredom, since the delight of sitting amply sufficed.
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We may often do as we please - but we cannot please as we please.
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A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing anxiety.
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The experience of overcoming fear is extraordinarily delightful.
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It seems to us unwise to have insisted on teaching geometry to the younger Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, in order to make him a good king, but from Plato's point of view it was essential. He was sufficiently Pythagorean to think that without mathematics no true wisdom is possible.
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War...seems a mere madness, a collective insanity.
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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It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
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.
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Humanistic ethics is based on the principle that only humans themselves can determine the criterion for virtue and not an authority transcending us.
Bertrand Russell
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Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
Bertrand Russell
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Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.
Bertrand Russell
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Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.
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The use of force stands in need of control by a public neutral authority, in the interests of liberty no less than of justice. Within a nation, this public authority will naturally be the state in relations between nations, if the present anarchy is to cease, it will have to be some international parliament.
Bertrand Russell