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I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose.

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
Use
Chose
Plain
Mathematical
Allowed
Logic
English
Everybody

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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The man who suffers from a sense of sin is suffering from a particular kind of self-love. In all this vast universe the thing that appears to him of most importance is that he himself should be virtuous. It is a grave defect in certain forms of traditional religion that they have encouraged this particular kind of self-absorption.
Bertrand Russell
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Protagoras did not know if the gods exist, but he held in any case they ought to be worshiped. Philosophy, according to him, had nothing edifying to teach, and for the survival of morals we must rely upon the thoughtlessness of the majority and their willingness to believe what they had been taught.
Bertrand Russell
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The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
Bertrand Russell
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For some reason which I have failed to understand, many people like the system [scientific totalitarianism] when it is Russian but disliked the very same system when it was German. I am compelled to think that this is due to the power of labels these people like whatever is labelled ‘Left’ without examining whether the label has any justification.
Bertrand Russell
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All human activity is prompted by desire.
Bertrand Russell
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An individual human existence should be like a river
Bertrand Russell
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Right conduct can never, except by some rare accident, be promoted by ignorance or hindered by knowledge.
Bertrand Russell
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The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
Bertrand Russell
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Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
Bertrand Russell
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Berkeley retains the merit of having shown that the existence of matter is capable of being denied without absurdity.
Bertrand Russell
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The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
Bertrand Russell
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3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is a paradox as is a paradox why the number 1 is not prime if it has no other divisors besides himself.
Bertrand Russell
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Religions which have any very strong hold over men's actions have generally some instinctive basis.
Bertrand Russell
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Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life.
Bertrand Russell
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In attempting to understand the elements out of which mental phenomena are compounded, it is of the greatest importance to remember that from the protozoa to man there is nowhere a very wide gap either in structure or in behaviour. From this fact it is a highly probable inference that there is also nowhere a very wide mental gap.
Bertrand Russell
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How much good it would do if one could exterminate the human race.
Bertrand Russell
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I consider the official Catholic attitude on divorce, birth control, and censorship exceedingly dangerous to mankind.
Bertrand Russell
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People who are vigorous and brutal often find war enjoyable.
Bertrand Russell
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Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.
Bertrand Russell
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A life devoted to science is therefore a happy life, and its happiness is derived from the very best sources that are open to dwellers on this troubled and passionate planet.
Bertrand Russell