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The human race may well become extinct before the end of the century. Speaking as a mathematician, I should say the odds are about three to one against survival.

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
Human
Survival
Humans
Century
Well
Race
Three
Ends
Extinct
Become
Mathematician
May
Odds
Wells
Speaking

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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The whole of theology, in regard to hell no less than to heaven, takes it for granted that Man is what is of most importance in the Universe of created beings. Since all theologians are men, this postulate has met with little opposition.
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What was exciting in the Victorian Age, would leave a man of franker epoch quite unmoved. The more prudes restrict the permissible degree of sexual appeal, the less is required to make such an appeal effective.
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The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points.
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A man's acts are partly determined by spontaneous impulse, partly by the conscious and unconscious effects of the various groups to which he belongs.
Bertrand Russell
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But I simply can't stand a view limited to this earth, I feel life is so small unless it has windows into other worlds...I like mathematics largely because it is not human.
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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.
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A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.
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RELIGION: A set of beliefs held as dogmas, dominating the conduct of life, going beyond or contrary to evidence, and inculcated by methods which are emotional or authoritarian, not intellectual.
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[There has been] every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.
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Ants and savages put strangers to death.
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Half the useful work in the world consists of combating the harmful work.
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The teacher, like the artist, the philosopher, and the man of letters, can only perform his work adequately if he feels himself to be an individual directed by an inner creative impulse, not dominated and fettered by an outside authority.
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Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.
Bertrand Russell
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Another merit of home is that it preserves the diversity between individuals. If we were all alike, it might be convenient for the bureaucrat and the statistician, but it would be very dull, and would lead to a very unprogressive society.
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Cynicism such as one finds very frequently among the most highly educated young men and women of the West, results from the combination of comfort and powerlessness.
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The really useful education is that which follows the direction of the child's own instinctive interests, supplying knowledge for which it is seeking, not dry, detailed information wholly out of relation to its spontaneous desires.
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There are infinite possibilities of error, and more cranks take up fashionable untruths than unfashionable truths.
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There may be no good reasons for very many opinions that are held with passion.
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To create a healthy philosophy you should renounce metaphysics but be a good mathematician.
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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?
Bertrand Russell