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The typical Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as possible.

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
Much
Changes
Cause
Environment
Chinaman
Causes
Westerner
Possible
Delicately
Enjoy
Westerners
Wish
Typical
Many
Wishes

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Worry is a form of fear, and all forms of fear produce fatigue. A man who has learned not to feel fear will find the fatigue of daily life enormously diminished.
Bertrand Russell
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In a logically perfect language, there will be one word and no more for every simple object, and everything that is not simple will be expressed by a combination of words, by a combination derived, of course, from the words for the simple things that enter in, one word for each simple component.
Bertrand Russell
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Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves.
Bertrand Russell
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Without civic morality communities perish without personal morality their survival has no value.
Bertrand Russell
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The Church no longer contends that knowledge is in itself sinful, though it did so in its palmy days but the acquisition of knowledge, even though not sinful, is dangerous, since it may lead to pride of intellect, and hence to a questioning of the Christian dogma.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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Arithmetic must be discovered in just the same sense in which Columbus discovered the West Indies, and we no more create numbers than he created the Indians.
Bertrand Russell
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What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer
Bertrand Russell
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In all the creative work that I have done, what has come first is a problem, a puzzle involving discomfort.
Bertrand Russell
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Religion is based ... mainly upon fear ... fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. 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.
Bertrand Russell
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All traditional logic habitually assumes that precise symbols are being employed. It is therefore not applicable to this terrestial life but only to an imagined celestial existence... logic takes us nearer to heaven than other studies.
Bertrand Russell
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Your writing is never as good as you hoped but never as bad as you feared.
Bertrand Russell
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Some `advanced thinkers' are of the opinion that anyone who differs from the conventional opinion must be in the right. This is a delusion if it were not, truth would be easier to come by than it is.
Bertrand Russell
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Altogether it will be found that a quiet life is characteristic of great men, and that their pleasures have not been of the sort that would look exciting to the outward eye.
Bertrand Russell
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All human activity is prompted by desire.
Bertrand Russell
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If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.
Bertrand Russell
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Freedom in education has many aspects. There is first of all freedom to learn or not to learn. Then there is freedom as to what to learn. And in later education there is freedom of opinion.
Bertrand Russell
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Of course not. After all, I may be wrong.
Bertrand Russell
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Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
Bertrand Russell
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Descartes, the father of modern philosophy ... would never-so he assures us-have been led to construct his philosophy if he had had only one teacher, for then he would have believed what he had been told but, finding that his professors disagreed with each other, he was forced to conclude that no existing doctrine was certain.
Bertrand Russell