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The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress.

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
World
Two
Reform
Stills
Progress
Still
Stand
Human
Justice
Humans
Existence
Without
Society
Great
Desire
Coexistence
Would
Understand
Engines

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One of the main causes of trouble in the world is dogmatic and fanatical belief in some doctrine for which there is no adequate evidence
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Human nature being what it is, people will insist upon getting some pleasure out of life.
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If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.
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Even in civilized mankind faint traces of monogamous instinct can be perceived.
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A man of Seville is shaved by the Barber of Seville if and only if the man does not shave himself. Does the barber shave himself?
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Beware the man of the single book
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Real life is, to most men, a long second best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.
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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.
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The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. If you take your children for a picnic on a doubtful day, they will demand a dogmatic answer as to whether it will be fine or wet, and be disappointed in you when you cannot be sure.
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Modern definitions of truth, such as those as pragmatism and instrumentalism, which are practical rather than contemplative, are inspired by industrialisation as opposed to aristocracy.
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When I found myself regarded as respectable, I began to wonder what sins I had committed. I must be very wicked, I thought. I began to engage in the most uncomfortable introspection.
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A widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
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People who are vigorous and brutal often find war enjoyable.
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Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business.
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Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
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Religions which have any very strong hold over men's actions have generally some instinctive basis.
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It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather that the hope of creatingfuture dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.
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If we compare Europe with other continents, it is marked out as [another] persecuting continent.
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At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
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I must, before I die, find some way to say the essential thing that is in me, that I have never said yet -- a thing that is not love or hate or pity or scorn, but the very breath of life, fierce and coming from far away, bringing into human life the vastness and the fearful passionless force of non-human things.
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