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A marriage is likely to be called happy if neither party ever expected to get much happiness out of it.

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
Happiness
Happy
Ever
Likely
Much
Expected
Neither
Marriage
Called
Party

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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My own view on religion is . . . It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and . . . to chronicle eclipses . . . These two services I am prepared to acknowledge.
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I say people who feel they must have a faith or religion in order to face life are showing a kind of cowardice, which in any other sphere would be considered contemptible. But when it is in the religious sphere it is thought admirable, and I cannot admire cowardice whatever sphere it is in.
Bertrand Russell
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There are certain things that our age needs. It needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.
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Man is a rational animal – so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favour of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents.
Bertrand Russell
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I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.
Bertrand Russell
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How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?
Bertrand Russell
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Science, by itself cannot, supply us with an ethic.
Bertrand Russell
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Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.
Bertrand Russell
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To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.
Bertrand Russell
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Common sense, however it tries, cannot avoid being surprised from time to time.
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Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young the other tenth is physiological, and will occur in one way or another whatever the state of the law may be.
Bertrand Russell
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Love cannot exists as a duty to tell a child that it ought to love its parents and its brother and sisters is utterly useless, if not worse.
Bertrand Russell
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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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When it was first proposed to establish laboratories at Cambridge, Todhunter, the mathematician, objected that it was unnecessary for students to see experiments performed, since the results could be vouched for by their teachers, all of them of the highest character, and many of them clergymen of the Church of England.
Bertrand Russell
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The fundamental principle in the analysis of propositions containing descriptions is this: Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.
Bertrand Russell
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Education, which was at first made universal in order that all might be able to read and write, has been found capable of serving quite other purposes. By instilling nonsense it unifies populations and generates collective enthusiasm.
Bertrand Russell
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A fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic institutions impossible.
Bertrand Russell
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The late F. W. H. Myers used to tell how he asked a man at a dinner table what he thought would happen to him when he died. The man tried to ignore the question, but, on being pressed, replied: Oh well, I suppose I shall inherit eternal bliss, but I wish you wouldn't talk about such unpleasant subjects.
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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Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is based on the idea of approximation. If a man tells you he knows a thing exactly, then you can be safe in inferring that you are speaking to an inexact man.
Bertrand Russell