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The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident but if it is the outcome of deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis.

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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More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.
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But I simply can't stand a view limited to this earth, I feel life is so small unless it has windows into other worlds...I like mathematics largely because it is not human.
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Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.
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Public opinion is always more tyrannical towards those who obviously fear it than towards those who feel indifferent to it.
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How much good it would do if one could exterminate the human race.
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A widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
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The experience of overcoming fear is extraordinarily delightful.
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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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War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
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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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I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness.
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When we have told how things behave when they are electrified, and under what circumstances they are electrified, we have told all there is to know
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For over two thousand years it has been the custom among earnest moralists to decry happiness as something degraded and unworthy
Bertrand Russell
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I have come to realize that an early symptom of approaching mental illness is the belief that one's work is terribly important. If you consider your work very important you should take a day off.
Bertrand Russell
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Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence, no matter what orthodoxy it may be.
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Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.
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.
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My sad conviction is that people can only agree about what they're not really interested in.
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No satisfaction based upon self-deception is solid.
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To a modern mind, it is difficult to feel enthusiastic about a virtuous life if nothing is going to be achieved by it.
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