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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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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
Moral
Enlarge
Human
Attempts
Humans
Customs
Cruel
Protest
Sympathy
Main
Progress
Consisted

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There are certain things that our age needs. It needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.
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The man who suffers from a sense of sin is suffering from a particular kind of self-love. In all this vast universe the thing that appears to him of most importance is that he himself should be virtuous. It is a grave defect in certain forms of traditional religion that they have encouraged this particular kind of self-absorption.
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Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.
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Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent
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Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a long period, as, for example, ancient Egypt persisted, or does it necessarily contain within itself forces which must bring either decay or explosion?
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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.
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Why repeat the old errors, if there are so many new errors to commit?
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The whole of theology, in regard to hell no less than to heaven, takes it for granted that Man is what is of most importance in the Universe of created beings. Since all theologians are men, this postulate has met with little opposition.
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You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.
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We shall say that we have acquaintance with anything of which we are directly aware, without the intermediary of any process of inference of any knowledge of truths.
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To think I have spent my life on absolute muck.
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Happiness, as is evident, depends partly upon external circumstances and partly upon oneself.
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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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Education, which was at first made universal in order that all might be able to read and write, has been found capable of serving quite other purposes. By instilling nonsense it unifies populations and generates collective enthusiasm.
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Protagoras did not know if the gods exist, but he held in any case they ought to be worshiped. Philosophy, according to him, had nothing edifying to teach, and for the survival of morals we must rely upon the thoughtlessness of the majority and their willingness to believe what they had been taught.
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It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.
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William James used to preach the will-to-believe. For my part, I should wish to preach the will-to-doubt. None of our beliefs are quite true all at least have a penumbra of vagueness and error. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
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Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?
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Real life is, to most men, a long second best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.
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Change is scientific progress is ethical change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
Bertrand Russell