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Science seems to be at war with itself.... Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false therefore it is false.

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
War
Science
Realism
Shows
Naive
True
Physics
Reality
Leads
Seems
False
Therefore
Technology

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The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress.
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To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
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Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
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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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It seems to us unwise to have insisted on teaching geometry to the younger Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, in order to make him a good king, but from Plato's point of view it was essential. He was sufficiently Pythagorean to think that without mathematics no true wisdom is possible.
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The fundamental principle in the analysis of propositions containing descriptions is this: Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.
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Shakespeare . . . If he does not give you delight, you had better ignore him [if you can].
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Man is a rational animal – so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favour of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents.
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Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
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Change is one thing, progress is another.
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Science, by itself cannot, supply us with an ethic.
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I was told that The Chinese said they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic for an atheist.
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We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
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I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.
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Those who advocate common usage in philosophy sometimes speak in a manner that suggests the mystique of the 'common man.'
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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
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A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.
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Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.
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I FIND IT SO DIFFICULT NOT TO HATE, WHEN I DO NOT HATE I FEEL WE FEW ARE SO LONELY IN THE WORLD
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Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
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