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To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.

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
Beginning
Wisdom
Wish
Understand
World
Actual

More quotes by 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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Dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the source of opinion it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to unbelievers it asks of its disciples that they should inhibit natural kindliness in favor of systematic hatred.
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The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
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I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy.
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Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos.
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Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety.
Bertrand Russell
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Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning
Bertrand Russell
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I am paid by the word, so I always write the shortest words possible.
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The difficulty is old, but none the less real. An omnipotent being who created a world containing evil not due to sin must Himself be at least partially evil.
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The time has come, or is about to come, when only large-scale civil disobedience, which should be nonviolent, can save the populations from the universal death which their governments are preparing for them.
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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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Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
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Neither the Church nor modern public opinion condemns petting, provided it stops short at a certain point.
Bertrand Russell
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Man can be stimulated by hope or driven by fear, but the hope and the fear must be vivid and immediate if they are to be effective without producing weariness.
Bertrand Russell
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Among human beings, the subjection of women is much more complete at a certain level of civilization than it is among savages. And the subjection is always reinforced by morality.
Bertrand Russell
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We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
Bertrand Russell
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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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Suppose atomic bombs had reduced the population of the world to one brother and sister should they let the human race die out?
Bertrand Russell
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What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.
Bertrand Russell