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Cruelty is, in theory, a perfectly adequate ground for divorce, but it may be interpreted so as to become absurd.

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
Cruelty
Perfectly
Absurd
Ground
Interpreted
Theory
Homosexuality
Become
Adequate
May
Divorce
Sexuality

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Those who advocate common usage in philosophy sometimes speak in a manner that suggests the mystique of the 'common man.'
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Man is a rational animal – so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favour of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents.
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Everybody can do something toward creating in his own environment kindly feelings rather than anger, reasonableness rather than hysteria, happiness rather than misery.
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The first essential character [of civilization], I should say, is forethought. This, indeed, is what mainly distinguishes men from brutes and adults from children.
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The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
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It will be found, as men grow more tolerant in their instincts, that many uniformities now insisted upon are useless and even harmful.
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There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literature or great philosophy they will not be able to discover the secret springs of happiness in the human heart they will know nothing of love and friendship.
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Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.
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The Eugenic Society . . . is perpetually bewailing the fact that wage-earners breed faster than middle-class people.
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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.
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My sad conviction is that people can only agree about what they're not really interested in.
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If a philosophy is to bring happiness it should be inspired by kindly feelings. Marx pretended that he wanted the happiness of the proletariat what he really wanted was the unhappiness of the bourgeois.
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Moral progress has consisted in the main of protest against cruel customs, and of attempts to enlarge human sympathy.
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The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as a training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely utilitarian point of view as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom.
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I am aware that many divines are far more marvelous than I am, and that I cannot wholly appreciate merits so far transcending my own. Nevertheless, even after making allowances under this head, I cannot but think that Omnipotence operating through all eternity might have produced something better.
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To realize the unimportance of time is the gate to wisdom.
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To create a healthy philosophy you should renounce metaphysics but be a good mathematician.
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I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
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Common sense, however it tries, cannot avoid being surprised from time to time.
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Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.
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