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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
Would
Excuse
Men
Atheism
Case
Cases
Belief
Religion
Kindly
Use
Cruel
Believe
Cruelty

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Those who in principle oppose birth control are either incapable of arithmetic or else in favour of war, pestilence and famine as permanent features of human life.
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I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
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For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favorable and unfavorable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern all alike, I should say, result from paucity of experience.
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Neither acquiescence in skepticism nor acquiescence in dogma is what education should produce.
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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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The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.
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Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.
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It is not my prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.
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The experience of overcoming fear is extraordinarily delightful.
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The essence of good manners consists in making it clear that one has no wish to hurt. When it is clearly necessary to hurt, it must be done in such a way as to make it evident that the necessity is felt to be regrettable.
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Affection cannot be created it can only be liberated.
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By self-interest, Man has become gregarious, but in instinct he has remained to a great extent solitary hence the need of religion and morality to reinforce self-interest.
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With civilized men..., it is, I think, chiefly love of excitement which makes the populace applaud when war breaks out the emotion is exactly the same as at a football match, although the results are sometimes somewhat more serious.
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The tendency of our perceptions is to emphasise increasingly the objective elements in an impression, unless we have some special reason, as artists have, for doing the opposite.
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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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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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Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable, and praised when they are not praiseworthy.
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Of course not. After all, I may be wrong.
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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.
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In all the creative work that I have done, what has come first is a problem, a puzzle involving discomfort.
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