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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.

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
Religion
Kindly
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Would
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More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
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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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To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
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When the journey from means to end is not too long, the means themselves are enjoyed if the end is ardently desired.
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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.
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Perhaps the nuclear physicists have come so near to the ultimate secrets that He thinks it time to bring their activities to a stop. And what simpler method could He devise than to let them carry their ingenuity to the point where they exterminate the human race?
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Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety.
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Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of great importance.
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God and Satan alike are essentially human figures, the one a projection of ourselves, the other of our enemies.
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One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his or her work important.
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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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The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident but if it is the outcome of deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis.
Bertrand Russell
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One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.
Bertrand Russell
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Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that is happiness.
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Reason may be a small force, but it is constant, and works always in one direction, while the forces of unreason destroy one another in futile strife.
Bertrand Russell
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Zeno was concerned with three problems... These are the problem of the infinitesimal, the infinite, and continuity.
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Bolshevism is to be reckoned with Mohammedanism rather than with Christianity and Buddhism. Christianity and Buddhism are primarily personal religions, with mystical doctrines and a love of contemplation. Mohammedanism and Bolshevism are practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of the world.
Bertrand Russell
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Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.
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Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it.
Bertrand Russell
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I feel as if one would only discover on one's death bed what one ought to have lived for
Bertrand Russell