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Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business.

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
Whole
Hopeless
Philosophy
Rather
Business
Seems

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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The man who pursues happiness wisely will aim at the possession of a number of subsidiary interests in addition to those central ones upon which his life is built.
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Only in thought is man a God in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.
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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.
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A smile happens in a flash, but its memory can last a lifetime.
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It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals.
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The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple I should say: Love is wise - Hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other.
Bertrand Russell
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The use of force stands in need of control by a public neutral authority, in the interests of liberty no less than of justice. Within a nation, this public authority will naturally be the state in relations between nations, if the present anarchy is to cease, it will have to be some international parliament.
Bertrand Russell
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Intelligence, it might be said, has caused our troubles but it is not unintelligence that will cure them. Only more and wiser intelligence can make a happier world
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So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it.
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Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.
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All traditional logic habitually assumes that precise symbols are being employed. It is therefore not applicable to this terrestial life but only to an imagined celestial existence... logic takes us nearer to heaven than other studies.
Bertrand Russell
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Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.
Bertrand Russell
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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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Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.
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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There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literature or great philosophy they will not be able to discover the secret springs of happiness in the human heart they will know nothing of love and friendship.
Bertrand Russell
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The time has come, or is about to come, when only large-scale civil disobedience, which should be nonviolent, can save the populations from the universal death which their governments are preparing for them.
Bertrand Russell
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You must believe that you can help bring about a better world.
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Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.
Bertrand Russell
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It is likely that America will be more important during the next century or two, but after that it may well be the turn of China.
Bertrand Russell