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

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What science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.
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Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit.
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Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens.
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The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.
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Televison allows thousands of people to laugh at the same joke and still remain alone.
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Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.
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It must not be supposed that the subjective elements are any less 'real' than the objective elements they are only less important... because they do not point to anything beyond ourselves.
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Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
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Education, and the life of the mind generally, is a matter in which individual initiative is the chief thing needed the function of the state should begin and end with insistence on some kind of education, and, if possible, a kind which promotes mental individualism, not a kind which happens to conform to the prejudices of government officials.
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If you question any candid person who is no longer young, he is very likely to tell you that, having tasted life in this world, he has no wish to begin again as a new boy in another.
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The essence of good manners consists in making it clear that one has no wish to hurt. When it is clearly necessary to hurt, it must be done in such a way as to make it evident that the necessity is felt to be regrettable.
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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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I have come to realize that an early symptom of approaching mental illness is the belief that one's work is terribly important. If you consider your work very important you should take a day off.
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Philosophy bakes no bread
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When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God.
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It is a natural propensity to attribute misfortune to someone's malignity.
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[There has been] every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.
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Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.
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In science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it. ... In art nothing worth doing can be done without genius in science even a very moderate capacity can contribute to a supreme achievement.
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I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose.
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