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Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of great importance.

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
Cannot
Become
Littles
Little
Insensitive
Many
Tells
Great
Importance
Much
Forget
Things
Science

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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.
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How much good it would do if one could exterminate the human race.
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Either man will abolish war, or war will abolish man.
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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 human race may well become extinct before the end of the century. Speaking as a mathematician, I should say the odds are about three to one against survival.
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Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
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To fear love is to fear life.
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The teacher, like the artist, the philosopher, and the man of letters, can only perform his work adequately if he feels himself to be an individual directed by an inner creative impulse, not dominated and fettered by an outside authority.
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Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.
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There are two motives for reading a book one, that you enjoy it the other, that you can boast about it.
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For some reason which I have failed to understand, many people like the system [scientific totalitarianism] when it is Russian but disliked the very same system when it was German. I am compelled to think that this is due to the power of labels these people like whatever is labelled ‘Left’ without examining whether the label has any justification.
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Next to worry probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy.
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A world without delight and without affection is a world destitute of value.
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The difficulty is old, but none the less real. An omnipotent being who created a world containing evil not due to sin must Himself be at least partially evil.
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Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.
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What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry.
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There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
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The human animal, like others, is adapted to a certain amount of struggle for life [and] the mere absence of effort from his life removes an essential ingredient of happiness. [. . .] He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
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Artists are on the average less happy than men of science.
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A million million years gives us some time to prepare for the end . . . let us make the best of it.
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