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

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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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Suppose atomic bombs had reduced the population of the world to one brother and sister should they let the human race die out?
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Each act of cruelty is eternally a part of the universe nothing that happens later can make that act good rather than bad, or can confer perfection on the whole of which it is a part.
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A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing anxiety.
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Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
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When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
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Even in civilized mankind faint traces of monogamous instinct can be perceived.
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Is the set of all sets which are not members of themselves a member of itself?
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This, however, is a passing nightmare in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.
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Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them.
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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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Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines.
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The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
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We love our habits more than our income, often more than our life.
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A man of Seville is shaved by the Barber of Seville if and only if the man does not shave himself. Does the barber shave himself?
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[There has been] every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.
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