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The three main extra-rational activities in modern life are religion, war, and love. all these are extra-rational, but love is not anti-rational, that is to say, a reasonable man may reasonably rejoice in its existence

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
Existence
Rejoice
Religion
Activities
War
Anti
Three
Reasonable
May
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Men
Main
Reasonably
Love
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Extra
Life
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More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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The man who only loves beautiful things is dreaming, whereas the man who knows absolute beauty is wide awake.
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Human nature being what it is, people will insist upon getting some pleasure out of life.
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One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told I have not noticed it.
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Indemnity for the past and security for the future.
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it [is] possible to suppose that, if Russia is allowed to have peace, an amazing industrial development may take place, making Russia a rival of the United States.
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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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You could take up the line that some of the gnostics took up - a line which I often thought was a very plausible one - that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.
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A widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
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Sir Arthur Eddington deduces religion from the fact that atoms do not obey the laws of mathematics. Sir James Jeans deduces it from the fact that they do.
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I did not know I loved you until I heard myself telling so, for one instance I thought, Good God, what have I said? and then I knew it was true.
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Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.
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Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness is dead.
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The key to happiness is accepting one unpleasant reality every day.
Bertrand Russell
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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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The conception of the necessary unit of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of the imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the straitwaistcoated benevolent institution, which idealism palms off as the totality of being.
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History is valuable, to begin with, because it is true and this, though not the whole of its value, is the foundation and condition of all the rest. That all knowledge, as such, is in some degree good, would appear to be at least probable and the knowledge of every historical fact possesses this element of goodness, even if it posses no other.
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If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
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Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that is happiness.
Bertrand Russell
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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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The essence of life is doing things for their own sakes.
Bertrand Russell