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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.

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
Takes
Content
Wife
Seriously
Upon
Catholic
Bishop
Ends
Soon
Bishops
Reason
Authority
Text
Husband
Abandon
Says
Rely
Trouble
Instance

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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No man treats a motorcar as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behavior to sin he does not say, 'You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.' He attempts to find out what is wrong and to set it right.
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A smile happens in a flash, but its memory can last a lifetime.
Bertrand Russell
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... mathematical knowledge ... is, in fact, merely verbal knowledge. 3 means 2+1, and 4 means 3+1. Hence it follows (though the proof is long) that 4 means the same as 2+2. Thus mathematical knowledge ceases to be mysterious.
Bertrand Russell
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How much good it would do if one could exterminate the human race.
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The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
Bertrand Russell
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I do not think any reasonable person can doubt that in India, China and Japan, if the knowledge of birth control existed, the birthrate would fall very rapidly
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Grasshopper always wrong in argument with chicken.
Bertrand Russell
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Love cannot exists as a duty to tell a child that it ought to love its parents and its brother and sisters is utterly useless, if not worse.
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There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
Bertrand Russell
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The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more amazing becomes what human beings have achieved.
Bertrand Russell
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The main thing needed to make men happy is intelligence.
Bertrand Russell
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The experience of overcoming fear is extraordinarily delightful.
Bertrand Russell
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With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway about the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Bertrand Russell
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If a philosophy is to bring happiness it should be inspired by kindly feelings. Marx pretended that he wanted the happiness of the proletariat what he really wanted was the unhappiness of the bourgeois.
Bertrand Russell
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Neither acquiescence in skepticism nor acquiescence in dogma is what education should produce.
Bertrand Russell
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Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
Bertrand Russell
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Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.
Bertrand Russell
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[One] must look into hell before one has any right to speak of heaven.
Bertrand Russell
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If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full.
Bertrand Russell
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Respectability, regularity, and routine - the whole cast-iron discipline of a modern industrial society - have atrophied the artistic impulse, and imprisoned love so that it can no longer be generous and free and creative, but must be either stuffy or furtive.
Bertrand Russell