Quote

With civilized men..., it is, I think, chiefly love of excitement which makes the populace applaud when war breaks out the emotion is exactly the same as at a football match, although the results are sometimes somewhat more serious.

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
Think
Serious
Breaks
Thinking
Results
Match
Break
Civilized
War
Excitement
Makes
Although
Populace
Sometimes
Exactly
Applaud
Men
Football
Chiefly
Love
Emotion
Somewhat

More quotes by 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.
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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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no one ever gossips about the virtues of others
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Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful therefore the worse they are performed, the better.
Bertrand Russell
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What was exciting in the Victorian Age, would leave a man of franker epoch quite unmoved. The more prudes restrict the permissible degree of sexual appeal, the less is required to make such an appeal effective.
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Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business.
Bertrand Russell
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Patriotism which has the quality of intoxication is a danger not only to its native land but to the world, and My country never wrong is an even more dangerous maxim than My country, right or wrong.
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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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All religions are both harmful and untrue.
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A man of Seville is shaved by the Barber of Seville if and only if the man does not shave himself. Does the barber shave himself?
Bertrand Russell
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One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
Bertrand Russell
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Moral progress has consisted in the main of protest against cruel customs, and of attempts to enlarge human sympathy.
Bertrand Russell
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I believe that the abolition of private ownership of land and capital is a necessary step toward any world in which the nations are to live at peace with one another.
Bertrand Russell
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Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.
Bertrand Russell
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The first essential character [of civilization], I should say, is forethought. This, indeed, is what mainly distinguishes men from brutes and adults from children.
Bertrand Russell
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A drop of water is not immortal it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution we should be inclined to be skeptical. In like manner we know that the brain is not immortal.
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There is in Aristotle an almost complete absence of what may be called benevolence or philanthropy. The sufferings of mankind . . . there is no evidence that they cause him unhappiness except when the sufferers happen to be his friends.
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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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Happiness, as is evident, depends partly upon external circumstances and partly upon oneself.
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It is only theory that makes men completely incautious.
Bertrand Russell