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

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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What will be the good of the conquest of leisure and health, if no one remembers how to use them?
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Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty-a beauty cold and austere ... yet sublimely pure and capable of stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.
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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 demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. If you take your children for a picnic on a doubtful day, they will demand a dogmatic answer as to whether it will be fine or wet, and be disappointed in you when you cannot be sure.
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We must be sceptical even of our scepticism.
Bertrand Russell
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All the important human advances that we know of since historical times began have been due to individuals of whom the majority faced virulent public opposition.
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Televison allows thousands of people to laugh at the same joke and still remain alone.
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Altogether it will be found that a quiet life is characteristic of great men, and that their pleasures have not been of the sort that would look exciting to the outward eye.
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The secrets to happiness include enterprise, exploration of one's interests and the overcoming of obstacles.
Bertrand Russell
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Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.
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Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.
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Common sense, however it tries, cannot avoid being surprised from time to time.
Bertrand Russell
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... the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be.
Bertrand Russell
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At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love. I had not imagined there was anything so delicious in the world. From that moment until I was thirty-eight, mathematics was my chief interest and my chief source of happiness.
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We know too much and feel too little.
Bertrand Russell
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I used often to go to America during Prohibition, and there was far more drunkenness there then than before the prohibition of pornography has much the same effect.
Bertrand Russell
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The taboo against nakedness is an obstacle to a decent attitude on the subject of sex.
Bertrand Russell
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I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.
Bertrand Russell
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The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Bertrand Russell
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It is a natural propensity to attribute misfortune to someone's malignity.
Bertrand Russell