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The fundamental defect of Christian ethics consists in the fact that it labels certain classes of acts 'sins' and others 'virtue' on grounds that have nothing to do with their social consequences.

Bertrand Russell

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Bertrand Russell
Age: 97 †
Born: 1872
Born: May 18
Died: 1970
Died: February 2
Analytic Philosopher
Autobiographer
Epistemologist
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Journalist
Logician
Mathematician
Metaphysician
Peace Activist
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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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Sins

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Boys and young men acquire readily the moral sentiments of their social milieu, whatever these sentiments may be.
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The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.
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The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.
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The tendency of our perceptions is to emphasise increasingly the objective elements in an impression, unless we have some special reason, as artists have, for doing the opposite.
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My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.
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Religions which have any very strong hold over men's actions have generally some instinctive basis.
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Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit.
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A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.
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In attempting to understand the elements out of which mental phenomena are compounded, it is of the greatest importance to remember that from the protozoa to man there is nowhere a very wide gap either in structure or in behaviour. From this fact it is a highly probable inference that there is also nowhere a very wide mental gap.
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I do not think any reasonable person can doubt that in India, China and Japan, if the knowledge of birth control existed, the birthrate would fall very rapidly
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Of course not. After all, I may be wrong.
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One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his or her work important.
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The pleasure of work is open to anyone who can develop some specialised skill, provided that he can get satisfaction from the exercise of his skill without demanding universal applause.
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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.
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The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.
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Your writing is never as good as you hoped but never as bad as you feared.
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Mankind is divided into two classes: those who, being artificial, praise nature, and those who, being natural, praise art.
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One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told I have not noticed it.
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The evolution of our spirit is blazed on the dark background of eternity by our individual wakes. Every person can, if he/she wishes, leave a more or less brilliant wake behind them.
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True happiness for human beings is possible only to those who develop their godlike potentialities to the utmost.
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