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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.

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
Men
Inferring
Inexact
Exact
Tells
Safe
Truth
Anything

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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In attempting to understand the elements out of which mental phenomena are compounded, it is of the greatest importance to remember that from the protozoa to man there is nowhere a very wide gap either in structure or in behaviour. From this fact it is a highly probable inference that there is also nowhere a very wide mental gap.
Bertrand Russell
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I used, when I was younger, to take my holidays walking. I would cover 25 miles a day, and when the evening came I had no need of anything to keep me from boredom, since the delight of sitting amply sufficed.
Bertrand Russell
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Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.
Bertrand Russell
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The man who suffers from a sense of sin is suffering from a particular kind of self-love. In all this vast universe the thing that appears to him of most importance is that he himself should be virtuous. It is a grave defect in certain forms of traditional religion that they have encouraged this particular kind of self-absorption.
Bertrand Russell
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Neither acquiescence in skepticism nor acquiescence in dogma is what education should produce.
Bertrand Russell
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I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.
Bertrand Russell
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If the West can claim superiority in anything, it is . . . in science and scientific technique.
Bertrand Russell
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Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.
Bertrand Russell
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Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit.
Bertrand Russell
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Protagoras did not know if the gods exist, but he held in any case they ought to be worshiped. Philosophy, according to him, had nothing edifying to teach, and for the survival of morals we must rely upon the thoughtlessness of the majority and their willingness to believe what they had been taught.
Bertrand Russell
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The doctrine (of) maintaining that the language of daily life, with words used in their ordinary meanings, suffices for philosophy . . . I find myself totally unable to accept . . . . Because it makes almost inevitable the perpetuation amongst philosophers of the muddle-headedness they have taken over from common sense.
Bertrand Russell
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There is no greater reason for children to honour parents than for parents to honour children except, that while the children are young, the parents are stronger than children.
Bertrand Russell
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For some reason which I have failed to understand, many people like the system [scientific totalitarianism] when it is Russian but disliked the very same system when it was German. I am compelled to think that this is due to the power of labels these people like whatever is labelled ‘Left’ without examining whether the label has any justification.
Bertrand Russell
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To think I have spent my life on absolute muck.
Bertrand Russell
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Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
Bertrand Russell
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Happiness, as is evident, depends partly upon external circumstances and partly upon oneself.
Bertrand Russell
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Without civic morality communities perish without personal morality their survival has no value.
Bertrand Russell
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Change is one thing, progress is another.
Bertrand Russell
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I feel life is so small unless it has windows into other worlds.
Bertrand Russell
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Love, children, and work, are the great sources of fertilizing contact between the individual and the rest of the world.
Bertrand Russell