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Even if we could be certain that one of the world's religions were perfectly true, given the sheer number of conflicting faiths on offer, every believer should expect damnation purely as a matter of probability.

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
World
Numbers
Sheer
Religion
Religions
Given
Perfectly
True
Offer
Conflicting
Certain
Believer
Faiths
Matter
Expect
Damnation
Even
Offers
Probability
Every
Number
Purely

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Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics.
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Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence, no matter what orthodoxy it may be.
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You could take up the line that some of the gnostics took up - a line which I often thought was a very plausible one - that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.
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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
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Berkeley retains the merit of having shown that the existence of matter is capable of being denied without absurdity.
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I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious.
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To the young I should offer two maxims: Don't accept superficial solutions of difficult problems. It is better to do a little good than much harm. I should not offer anything more specific every young person should decide on his or her own credo.
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To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.
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You could live without the opera singer, but not without the services of the baker. On this ground you might say that the baker performs a greater service but no lover of music would agree.
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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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All human activity is prompted by desire.
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The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a product of civilization and education.
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Mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else.
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With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway about the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
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Another merit of home is that it preserves the diversity between individuals. If we were all alike, it might be convenient for the bureaucrat and the statistician, but it would be very dull, and would lead to a very unprogressive society.
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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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You may, if you are an old-fashioned schoolmaster, wish to consider yourself full of universal benevolence and at the same time derive great pleasure from caning boys. In order to reconcile these two desires you have to persuade yourself that caning
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Among human beings, the subjection of women is much more complete at a certain level of civilization than it is among savages. And the subjection is always reinforced by morality.
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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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Clergymen almost necessarily fail in two ways as teachers of morals. They condemn acts which do no harm and they condone acts which do great harm.
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