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Berkeley retains the merit of having shown that the existence of matter is capable of being denied without absurdity.

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
Existence
Without
Retains
Matter
Berkeley
Absurdity
Shown
Denied
Merit
Capable

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Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
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Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.
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Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.
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The supreme maxim in scientific philosophising is this: wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities.
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It is only theory that makes men completely incautious.
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A drop of water is not immortal it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution we should be inclined to be skeptical. In like manner we know that the brain is not immortal.
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Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.
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Moral progress has consisted in the main of protest against cruel customs, and of attempts to enlarge human sympathy.
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If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.
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The Stoic assures us that what is happening now will happen over and over again. [If so, Providende would] ultimately grow weary through despair.
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Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton.
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Undoubtedly the desire for food has been and still is one of the main causes of political events.
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The essence of life is doing things for their own sakes.
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Children, after being limbs of Satan in traditional theology and mystically illuminated angels in the minds of educational reformers, have reverted to being little devils not theological demons inspired by the evil one, but scientific Freudian abominations inspired by the unconscious.
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The true spirit of delight...is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.
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Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning
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The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.
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I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy – ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of that joy. ... I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined.
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Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.
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(on A History of Western Philosophy) I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if, indeed, such man exists.
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