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For over two thousand years it has been the custom among earnest moralists to decry happiness as something degraded and unworthy

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
Thousand
Degraded
Happiness
Moralist
Two
Custom
Something
Unworthy
Years
Earnest
Customs
Morality
Decry
Among
Moralists

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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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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On the one hand, philosophy is to keep us thinking about things that we may come to know, and on the other hand to keep us modestly aware of how much that seems like knowledge isn't knowledge
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I do so hate to leave this world.
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... mathematical knowledge ... is, in fact, merely verbal knowledge. 3 means 2+1, and 4 means 3+1. Hence it follows (though the proof is long) that 4 means the same as 2+2. Thus mathematical knowledge ceases to be mysterious.
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The legacy of Greece to Western philosophy is Western philosophy.
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An individual human existence should be like a river
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It seems to us unwise to have insisted on teaching geometry to the younger Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, in order to make him a good king, but from Plato's point of view it was essential. He was sufficiently Pythagorean to think that without mathematics no true wisdom is possible.
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If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.
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Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.
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The supreme maxim in scientific philosophising is this: wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities.
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One is always a little afraid of love, but above all, one is afraid of pain or causing pain.
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To create a healthy philosophy you should renounce metaphysics but be a good mathematician.
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The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty.
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Only six need be attempted.
Bertrand Russell
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In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.
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War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
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A man's acts are partly determined by spontaneous impulse, partly by the conscious and unconscious effects of the various groups to which he belongs.
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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.
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We must be skeptical even of our skepticism.
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A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing anxiety.
Bertrand Russell