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Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent

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
Advance
Civilization
Nature
Every
Denounced
Unnatural
Openness
Recent

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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There may be no good reasons for very many opinions that are held with passion.
Bertrand Russell
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I say people who feel they must have a faith or religion in order to face life are showing a kind of cowardice, which in any other sphere would be considered contemptible. But when it is in the religious sphere it is thought admirable, and I cannot admire cowardice whatever sphere it is in.
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My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.
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Stupidity and unconscious bias often work more damage than venality.
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To write tragedy, a man must feel tragedy. To feel tragedy, a man must be aware of the world in which he lives. Not only with his mind, but with his blood and sinews.
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The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as a training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely utilitarian point of view as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom.
Bertrand Russell
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There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal as a human being to human beings remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
Bertrand Russell
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I am aware that many divines are far more marvelous than I am, and that I cannot wholly appreciate merits so far transcending my own. Nevertheless, even after making allowances under this head, I cannot but think that Omnipotence operating through all eternity might have produced something better.
Bertrand Russell
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True happiness for human beings is possible only to those who develop their godlike potentialities to the utmost.
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What was exciting in the Victorian Age, would leave a man of franker epoch quite unmoved. The more prudes restrict the permissible degree of sexual appeal, the less is required to make such an appeal effective.
Bertrand Russell
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I have throughout been curious about how much we can be said to know and with what degree of certainty or doubtfulness.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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There are certain things that our age needs. It needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.
Bertrand Russell
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Prophets, mystics, poets, scientific discoverers are men whose lives are dominated by a vision they are essentially solitary men . . . whose thoughts and emotions are not subject to the dominion of the herd.
Bertrand Russell
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When we perceive any object of a familiar kind, much of what appears subjectively to be immediately given is really derived from past experience.
Bertrand Russell
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Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies, and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him.
Bertrand Russell
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That Plato's Republic should have been admired, on its political side, by decent people, is perhaps the most astonishing example of literary snobbery in all history.
Bertrand Russell
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I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.
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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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The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
Bertrand Russell