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What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer

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
World
Scientific
Deities
Terrorism
Combined
Attitude
Dogma
Millions
Inquiry
Politics
Desirable
Stalin
Belief
Imagined
Likeness
Whether
Torture
Inflicted
Needs
Believer
Deity

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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.
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On the one hand, philosophy is to keep us thinking about things that we may come to know, and on the other hand to keep us modestly aware of how much that seems like knowledge isn't knowledge
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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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Moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modern world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda.
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The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.
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Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
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Humanistic ethics is based on the principle that only humans themselves can determine the criterion for virtue and not an authority transcending us.
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There is darkness without and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, nor vastness anywhere only triviality for a moment and then nothing.
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Without civic morality communities perish without personal morality their survival has no value.
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Love cannot exists as a duty to tell a child that it ought to love its parents and its brother and sisters is utterly useless, if not worse.
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One is always a little afraid of love, but above all, one is afraid of pain or causing pain.
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Boys and young men acquire readily the moral sentiments of their social milieu, whatever these sentiments may be.
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If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument... The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination.
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Meantime, the world in which we exist has other aims. But it will pass away, burnt up in the fire of its own hot passions and from its ashes will spring a new and younger world, full of fresh hope, woth the light of morning in its eyes.
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Whenever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness, it is a sign of emotional failure.
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The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.
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The Stoic assures us that what is happening now will happen over and over again. [If so, Providende would] ultimately grow weary through despair.
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The conception of the necessary unit of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of the imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the straitwaistcoated benevolent institution, which idealism palms off as the totality of being.
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One of the most painful circumstances of recent advances in science is that each one makes us know less than we thought we did
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The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
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