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We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think in fact they do so.

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
Views
Involves
Thinking
Effort
Tendency
World
Dies
Sooner
People
Fact
Tendencies
Facts
Opposite
Thought
Prejudice
Must
Opposites
Prejudices
Would
View
Conform

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How about Pithecanthropus Erectus? Was it really he who ate the apple? Or was it Homo Pekiniensis?
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One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.
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In adolescence, I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was restrained by the desire to know more mathematics. Now, on the contrary, I enjoy life I might almost say that with every year that passes I enjoy it more.
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Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence, no matter what orthodoxy it may be.
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Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
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War grows out of ordinary human nature.
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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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I've always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel.
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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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If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full.
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Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms no fire, no heroism, no intensity of though and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave.
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Bad philosophers may have a certain influence good philosophers, never.
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Whether science-and indeed civilization in general-can long survive depends upon psychology, that is to say, it depends upon what human beings desire.
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Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety.
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Bolshevism is to be reckoned with Mohammedanism rather than with Christianity and Buddhism. Christianity and Buddhism are primarily personal religions, with mystical doctrines and a love of contemplation. Mohammedanism and Bolshevism are practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of the world.
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Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business.
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My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.
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Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.
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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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To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
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