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Descartes, the father of modern philosophy ... would never-so he assures us-have been led to construct his philosophy if he had had only one teacher, for then he would have believed what he had been told but, finding that his professors disagreed with each other, he was forced to conclude that no existing doctrine was certain.

Bertrand Russell

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

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We may often do as we please - but we cannot please as we please.
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I feel as if one would only discover on one's death bed what one ought to have lived for
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An individual human existence should be like a river
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Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.
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It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know-or care-about circumstances in the colonies.
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Why repeat the old errors, if there are so many new errors to commit?
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... the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be.
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The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.
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If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.
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To a modern mind, it is difficult to feel enthusiastic about a virtuous life if nothing is going to be achieved by it.
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It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
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Indemnity for the past and security for the future.
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One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.
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A good man will never suspect his friends of shady actions: this is part of his goodness. A good man will never be suspected by the public of using his goodness to screen villains: this is part of his utility
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How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?
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(on A History of Western Philosophy) I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if, indeed, such man exists.
Bertrand Russell
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All human activity is prompted by desire.
Bertrand Russell
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The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so at other times he thinks about other things, or, if it is night, about nothing at all.
Bertrand Russell
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The essence of education is that it is a change effected in the organism to satisfy the operator.
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It seems to us unwise to have insisted on teaching geometry to the younger Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, in order to make him a good king, but from Plato's point of view it was essential. He was sufficiently Pythagorean to think that without mathematics no true wisdom is possible.
Bertrand Russell