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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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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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Even if we could be certain that one of the world's religions were perfectly true, given the sheer number of conflicting faiths on offer, every believer should expect damnation purely as a matter of probability.
Bertrand Russell
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Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
Bertrand Russell
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You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.
Bertrand Russell
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My sad conviction is that people can only agree about what they're not really interested in.
Bertrand Russell
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... mathematical knowledge ... is, in fact, merely verbal knowledge. 3 means 2+1, and 4 means 3+1. Hence it follows (though the proof is long) that 4 means the same as 2+2. Thus mathematical knowledge ceases to be mysterious.
Bertrand Russell
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One of the most interesting and harmful delusions to which men and nations can be subjected is that of imagining themselves special instruments of the Divine Will.
Bertrand Russell
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Grasshopper always wrong in argument with chicken.
Bertrand Russell
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Religion is based ... mainly upon fear ... fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.
Bertrand Russell
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Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake.
Bertrand Russell
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When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us.
Bertrand Russell
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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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Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth.
Bertrand Russell
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Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.
Bertrand Russell
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War grows out of ordinary human nature.
Bertrand Russell
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In mass cruelty, the expulsions of Germans ordered by the Russians fall not very far short of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis.
Bertrand Russell
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Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.
Bertrand Russell
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Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.
Bertrand Russell
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A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell