Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
[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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Virtue
Virtuous
Must
Apart
Excels
Men
Tend
Clergymen
Average
Convention
Atheism
Regarding
Mankind
Sink
Rest
Selection
Told
Conventions
More quotes by Bertrand Russell
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
Bertrand Russell
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
Bertrand Russell
It is only theory that makes men completely incautious.
Bertrand Russell
Is a man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water crawling impotently on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is he perhaps both as once?
Bertrand Russell
I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.
Bertrand Russell
If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
Bertrand Russell
Dread of disaster makes everybody act in the very way that increases the disaster.
Bertrand Russell
Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau.
Bertrand Russell
Man is a rational animal – so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favour of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents.
Bertrand Russell
Dread of disaster makes everybody act in the very way that increases the disaster. Psychologically the situation is analogous to that of people trampled to death when there is a panic in a theatre caused by a cry of `Fire!'.
Bertrand Russell
Americans need rest, but do not know it.
Bertrand Russell
A European who goes to New York and Chicago sees the future... when he goes to Asia he sees the past.
Bertrand Russell
Is the set of all sets which are not members of themselves a member of itself?
Bertrand Russell
I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.
Bertrand Russell
You may, if you are an old-fashioned schoolmaster, wish to consider yourself full of universal benevolence and at the same time derive great pleasure from caning boys. In order to reconcile these two desires you have to persuade yourself that caning
Bertrand Russell
No satisfaction based upon self-deception is solid, and however unpleasant the truth may be, it is better to face it once and for all, to get used to it, and to proceed to build your life in accordance with it.
Bertrand Russell
When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.
Bertrand Russell
What science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.
Bertrand Russell
In detective stories . . . I alternately identify myself with the murderer and the huntsman-detective, but . . . there are those to which this vicarious outlet is too mild.
Bertrand Russell
Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.
Bertrand Russell
