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Common sense, however it tries, cannot avoid being surprised from time to time.
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
Common
Sense
Cannot
Trying
Tries
Time
Surprised
Logic
Avoid
However
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A smile happens in a flash, but its memory can last a lifetime.
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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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Christ . . . said that a man who had looked after a woman lustfully had sinned as much as the man who had seduced her. How absurd!
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Dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the source of opinion it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to unbelievers it asks of its disciples that they should inhibit natural kindliness in favor of systematic hatred.
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You may, if you are an old-fashioned schoolmaster, wish to consider yourself full of universal benevolence and at the same time derive great pleasure from caning boys. In order to reconcile these two desires you have to persuade yourself that caning
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That which exists through itself is called The Eternal. The Eternal has neither name nor shape. It is the one essence, the one primal spirit. Essence and life cannot be seen. They are contained in the light of heaven. The light of heaven cannot be seen. It is contained in the two eyes.
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Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.
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The taboo against nakedness is an obstacle to a decent attitude on the subject of sex.
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When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man.
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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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Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.
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Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.
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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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Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety.
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Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know.
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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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Of course not. After all, I may be wrong.
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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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Inferences of Science and Common Sense differ from those of deductive logic and mathematics in a very important respect, namely, when the premises are true and the reasoning correct, the conclusion is only probable.
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