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I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy – ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of that joy. ... I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined.

Bertrand Russell

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Bertrand Russell
Age: 97 †
Born: 1872
Born: May 18
Died: 1970
Died: February 2
Analytic Philosopher
Autobiographer
Epistemologist
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Journalist
Logician
Mathematician
Metaphysician
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Bertrand Arthur William Russell
Russell
Bertrand Russell
3rd Earl Russell
Bertrand Russell
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Bertrand Arthur William Russell
3rd Earl Russell
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More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter second, telling other people to do so.
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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There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire - poison and antidote.
Bertrand Russell
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That which exists through itself is called The Eternal. The Eternal has neither name nor shape. It is the one essence, the one primal spirit. Essence and life cannot be seen. They are contained in the light of heaven. The light of heaven cannot be seen. It is contained in the two eyes.
Bertrand Russell
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Answering questions is a major part of sex education. Two rules cover the ground. First, always give a truthful answer to a question secondly, regard sex knowledge as exactly like any other knowledge.
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The fundamental defect of Christian ethics consists in the fact that it labels certain classes of acts 'sins' and others 'virtue' on grounds that have nothing to do with their social consequences.
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Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.
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All's well that ends well which is the epitaph I should put on my tombstone if I were the last man left alive.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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William James used to preach the will-to-believe. For my part, I should wish to preach the will-to-doubt. None of our beliefs are quite true all at least have a penumbra of vagueness and error. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
Bertrand Russell
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The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.
Bertrand Russell
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A million million years gives us some time to prepare for the end . . . let us make the best of it.
Bertrand Russell
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History is valuable, to begin with, because it is true and this, though not the whole of its value, is the foundation and condition of all the rest. That all knowledge, as such, is in some degree good, would appear to be at least probable and the knowledge of every historical fact possesses this element of goodness, even if it posses no other.
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Those who advocate common usage in philosophy sometimes speak in a manner that suggests the mystique of the 'common man.'
Bertrand Russell
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We know that the exercise of virtue should be its own reward, and it seems to follow that the enduring of it on the part of the patient should be its own punishment.
Bertrand Russell
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No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.
Bertrand Russell
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Folly is perennial and yet the human race has survived.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.
Bertrand Russell
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The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.
Bertrand Russell