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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
Hopeless
Philosophy
Rather
Business
Seems
Whole

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Altogether it will be found that a quiet life is characteristic of great men, and that their pleasures have not been of the sort that would look exciting to the outward eye.
Bertrand Russell
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[Regarding] the convention that clergymen are more virtuous than other men. Any average selection of mankind, set apart and told that it excels the rest in virtue, must tend to sink below the average.
Bertrand Russell
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Only in thought is man a God in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.
Bertrand Russell
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No satisfaction based upon self-deception is solid, and however unpleasant the truth may be, it is better to face it once and for all, to get used to it, and to proceed to build your life in accordance with it.
Bertrand Russell
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One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his or her work important.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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Either man will abolish war, or war will abolish man.
Bertrand Russell
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A physicist looks for causes that does not necessarily imply that there are causes everywhere. A man may look for gold without assuming that there is gold everywhere if he finds gold, well and good, if he doesn't he's had bad luck. The same is true when the physicists look for causes.
Bertrand Russell
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Science seems to be at war with itself.... Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false therefore it is false.
Bertrand Russell
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Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent
Bertrand Russell
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Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
Bertrand Russell
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Berkeley retains the merit of having shown that the existence of matter is capable of being denied without absurdity.
Bertrand Russell
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The whiter my hair becomes, the more ready people are to believe what I say.
Bertrand Russell
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If we compare Europe with other continents, it is marked out as [another] persecuting continent.
Bertrand Russell
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Some `advanced thinkers' are of the opinion that anyone who differs from the conventional opinion must be in the right. This is a delusion if it were not, truth would be easier to come by than it is.
Bertrand Russell
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For my part, the thing I would wish to obtain from money would be leisure with security. But what the typical modern man desires to get with it is more money, with a view to ostentation, splendour, and the outshining of those who have hitherto been his equals.
Bertrand Russell
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When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us.
Bertrand Russell
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It is only theory that makes men completely incautious.
Bertrand Russell
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Affection cannot be created it can only be liberated.
Bertrand Russell
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Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.
Bertrand Russell