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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.

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
Young
System
Instruction
Wisdom
Leads
Utilitarian
Knowledge
Treated
Gateway
Point
Road
Gateways
Fact
Regard
Livelihood
Science
Training
Examination
Facts
View
Mainly
Money
Views
Purely

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.
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One's work is never so bad as it appears on bad days, nor so good as it appears on good days.
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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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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.
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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
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I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.
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Human nature being what it is, people will insist upon getting some pleasure out of life.
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Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent
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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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Berkeley retains the merit of having shown that the existence of matter is capable of being denied without absurdity.
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A priori Logical propositions are such as can be known a priori without study of the actual world.
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What science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.
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The evolution of our spirit is blazed on the dark background of eternity by our individual wakes. Every person can, if he/she wishes, leave a more or less brilliant wake behind them.
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Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.
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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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Protagoras did not know if the gods exist, but he held in any case they ought to be worshiped. Philosophy, according to him, had nothing edifying to teach, and for the survival of morals we must rely upon the thoughtlessness of the majority and their willingness to believe what they had been taught.
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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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Whenever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness, it is a sign of emotional failure.
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No rules, however wise, are a substitute for affection and tact.
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Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty-a beauty cold and austere ... yet sublimely pure and capable of stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.
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