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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
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Belief
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Kindly
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Believe
Cruelty
Would
Excuse
Men
Atheism
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A fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic institutions impossible.
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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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War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
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Aristotle and Plato considered Greeks so innately superior to barbarians that slavery is justified so long as the master is Greek and the slave barbarian.
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Man can be stimulated by hope or driven by fear, but the hope and the fear must be vivid and immediate if they are to be effective without producing weariness.
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3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is a paradox as is a paradox why the number 1 is not prime if it has no other divisors besides himself.
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If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody, and no unemployment — assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to use so much leisure.
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A marriage is likely to be called happy if neither party ever expected to get much happiness out of it.
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The twin conceptions of sin and vindictive punishment seem to be at the root of much that is most vigorous, both in religion and politics.
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Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness is dead.
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Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle.
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The essence of life is doing things for their own sakes.
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Beware the man of the single book
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To the primitive mind, everything is either friendly or hostile but experience has shown that friendliness and hostility are not the conceptions by which the world is to be understood.
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The luxury to disparage freedom is the privilege of those who already possess it.
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The first step in wisdom, as well as in morality, is to open the windows of the ego as wide as possible.
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Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
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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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