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The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.

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
Advances
Thinking
Mainly
Scientific
Technique
Pursuit
Knowledge
Power
Love
Actuated

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
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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.
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Next to worry probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy.
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It is no credit to the orthodox that they do not now believe all the absurdities that were believed 150 years ago. The gradual emasculation of the Christian doctrine has been effected in spite of the most vigorous resistance, and solely as the result of the onslaughts of freethinkers.
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My sad conviction is that people can only agree about what they're not really interested in.
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Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the government.
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European travellers find the Japanese a smiling race.
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Education, and the life of the mind generally, is a matter in which individual initiative is the chief thing needed the function of the state should begin and end with insistence on some kind of education, and, if possible, a kind which promotes mental individualism, not a kind which happens to conform to the prejudices of government officials.
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All the important human advances that we know of since historical times began have been due to individuals of whom the majority faced virulent public opposition.
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We love our habits more than our income, often more than our life.
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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.
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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A man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if indeed such a man exists.
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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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Respectability, regularity, and routine - the whole cast-iron discipline of a modern industrial society - have atrophied the artistic impulse, and imprisoned love so that it can no longer be generous and free and creative, but must be either stuffy or furtive.
Bertrand Russell
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Life is just one cup of coffee after another, and don't look for anything else.
Bertrand Russell
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The taboo against nakedness is an obstacle to a decent attitude on the subject of sex.
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One of the most painful circumstances of recent advances in science is that each one makes us know less than we thought we did
Bertrand Russell
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It is not known why the Lord made the human body as he did, since one might suppose that omnipotence could have made it such as would not have shocked the nice people.
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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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