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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
Technique
Pursuit
Knowledge
Power
Love
Actuated
Think
Advances
Thinking
Mainly
Scientific

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Plato has dramatic strength ... but is quite unaware of the strength of the argument against his position ... and allows himself to be grossly unfair in arguing against it.
Bertrand Russell
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If two hitherto rival football teams, under the influence of brotherly love, decided to co-operate in placing the football first beyond one goal and then beyond the other, no one's happiness would be increased
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The Eugenic Society . . . is perpetually bewailing the fact that wage-earners breed faster than middle-class people.
Bertrand Russell
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Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.
Bertrand Russell
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When we perceive any object of a familiar kind, much of what appears subjectively to be immediately given is really derived from past experience.
Bertrand Russell
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The best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration.
Bertrand Russell
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When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.
Bertrand Russell
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One must care about a world one will not see.
Bertrand Russell
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I feel as if one would only discover on one's death bed what one ought to have lived for
Bertrand Russell
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I have throughout been curious about how much we can be said to know and with what degree of certainty or doubtfulness.
Bertrand Russell
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Abstract work, if one wishes to do it well, must be allowed to destroy one's humanity one raises a monument which is at the same time a tomb, in which, voluntarily, one slowly inters oneself.
Bertrand Russell
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Aristotle and Plato considered Greeks so innately superior to barbarians that slavery is justified so long as the master is Greek and the slave barbarian.
Bertrand Russell
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A fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic institutions impossible.
Bertrand Russell
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There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal as a human being to human beings remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
Bertrand Russell
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What Galileo and Newton were to the seventeenth century, Darwin was to the nineteenth.
Bertrand Russell
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The main thing needed to make men happy is intelligence.
Bertrand Russell
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The first essential character [of civilization], I should say, is forethought. This, indeed, is what mainly distinguishes men from brutes and adults from children.
Bertrand Russell
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Cruelty is, in theory, a perfectly adequate ground for divorce, but it may be interpreted so as to become absurd.
Bertrand Russell
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We have almost reached the point where praise of rationality is held to mark a man as an old fogey regrettably surviving from a bygone age.
Bertrand Russell
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That which exists through itself is called The Eternal. The Eternal has neither name nor shape. It is the one essence, the one primal spirit. Essence and life cannot be seen. They are contained in the light of heaven. The light of heaven cannot be seen. It is contained in the two eyes.
Bertrand Russell