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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.

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
Feel
Feels
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Virtuous
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Achieved
Life
Enthusiasm
Modern
Difficult
Nothing

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Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
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The question of unrealityis a very important one. Misled by grammar, the great majority of those logicians who have dealt with this question have dealt with it on mistaken lines. They have regarded grammatical form as a surer guide in analysis than, in fact, it is. And they have not known what differences in grammatical form are important.
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There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
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The evolution of our spirit is blazed on the dark background of eternity by our individual wakes. Every person can, if he/she wishes, leave a more or less brilliant wake behind them.
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To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need of our civilisation.
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Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
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And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence
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A man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if indeed such a man exists.
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Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.
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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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All definite knowledge - so I should contend - belongs to science all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack by both sides this No Man's Land is philosophy.
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[One] must look into hell before one has any right to speak of heaven.
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If we compare Europe with other continents, it is marked out as [another] persecuting continent.
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The mind is a strange machine which can combine the materials offered to it in the most astonishing ways.
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In science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it. ... In art nothing worth doing can be done without genius in science even a very moderate capacity can contribute to a supreme achievement.
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Neither acquiescence in skepticism nor acquiescence in dogma is what education should produce.
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Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
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Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.
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When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God.
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In his youth, Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry and had a natural daughter. At this period, he was a bad man. Then he became good, abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles and wrote bad poetry.
Bertrand Russell