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Clergymen almost necessarily fail in two ways as teachers of morals. They condemn acts which do no harm and they condone acts which do great harm.

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
Almost
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Two
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Great
Necessarily
Way
Fail
Condone
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Clergymen
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Condemn
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All religions are both harmful and untrue.
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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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If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.
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Choose your parents wisely.
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Fervent religious believers sacrifice pleasures of the body, but instead enjoy pleasures of the mind, including the joy of knowing that those men who didn't follow their religion would be tortured for eternity.
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It seems to us unwise to have insisted on teaching geometry to the younger Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, in order to make him a good king, but from Plato's point of view it was essential. He was sufficiently Pythagorean to think that without mathematics no true wisdom is possible.
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Always remember that true happiness is not in getting what you want, but wanting what you already have. He who dies with the most toys is still dead. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
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I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.
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Even in civilized mankind faint traces of monogamous instinct can be perceived.
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Although it is a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out, sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation
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Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.
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Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.
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Artists are on the average less happy than men of science.
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... the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be.
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Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful therefore the worse they are performed, the better.
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Stupidity and unconscious bias often work more damage than venality.
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