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[Regarding] the convention that clergymen are more virtuous than other men. Any average selection of mankind, set apart and told that it excels the rest in virtue, must tend to sink below the average.

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
Men
Tend
Clergymen
Average
Convention
Atheism
Regarding
Mankind
Sink
Rest
Selection
Told
Conventions
Virtue
Virtuous
Must
Apart
Excels

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our trouble. . . . No Catholic, for instance, takes seriously the text which says that a Bishop should be the husband of one wife.
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When all experts agree, you need to watch out.
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Zeno was concerned with three problems... These are the problem of the infinitesimal, the infinite, and continuity.
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Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
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Dread of disaster makes everybody act in the very way that increases the disaster.
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The really useful education is that which follows the direction of the child's own instinctive interests, supplying knowledge for which it is seeking, not dry, detailed information wholly out of relation to its spontaneous desires.
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Cruelty is, in theory, a perfectly adequate ground for divorce, but it may be interpreted so as to become absurd.
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If you question any candid person who is no longer young, he is very likely to tell you that, having tasted life in this world, he has no wish to begin again as a new boy in another.
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Some people would rather die than think.
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There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
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The man who only loves beautiful things is dreaming, whereas the man who knows absolute beauty is wide awake.
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Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.
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The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so at other times he thinks about other things, or, if it is night, about nothing at all.
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Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent
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Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God, or with mystic insight, or with any of the matters with which the more elevated and spiritual moralists are concerned.
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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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Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.
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No satisfaction based upon self-deception is solid.
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It is not my prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.
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Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
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