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My own view on religion is . . . It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and . . . to chronicle eclipses . . . These two services I am prepared to acknowledge.

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
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More quotes by 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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The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we live.
Bertrand Russell
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All knowledge, we feel, must be built up upon our instinctive beliefs and if these are rejected, nothing is left.
Bertrand Russell
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No satisfaction based upon self-deception is solid.
Bertrand Russell
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Zeno was concerned with three problems... These are the problem of the infinitesimal, the infinite, and continuity.
Bertrand Russell
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In his youth, Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry and had a natural daughter. At this period, he was a bad man. Then he became good, abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles and wrote bad poetry.
Bertrand Russell
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The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell
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William James used to preach the will-to-believe. For my part, I should wish to preach the will-to-doubt. None of our beliefs are quite true all at least have a penumbra of vagueness and error. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
Bertrand Russell
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Only in thought is man a God in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.
Bertrand Russell
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The difficulty is old, but none the less real. An omnipotent being who created a world containing evil not due to sin must Himself be at least partially evil.
Bertrand Russell
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If one lived for ever the joys of life would inevitably in the end lose their savour. As it is, they remain perennially fresh.
Bertrand Russell
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I went to Salt Lake City and the Mormons tried to convert me, but when I found they forbade tea and tobacco I thought it was no religion for me.
Bertrand Russell
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Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens.
Bertrand Russell
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War grows out of ordinary human nature.
Bertrand Russell
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There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal as a human being to human beings remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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Calculus required continuity, and continuity was supposed to require the infinitely little but nobody could discover what the infinitely little might be.
Bertrand Russell
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Machines have altered our way of life, but not our instincts. Consequently, there is maladjustment.
Bertrand Russell
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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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The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as a training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely utilitarian point of view as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom.
Bertrand Russell