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When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God.

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
Attempt
Benjamin
Defeat
Clergy
Franklin
England
Condemned
Support
Enthusiastic
America
Lightning
Invented
George
Impious

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Religions which have any very strong hold over men's actions have generally some instinctive basis.
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The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a product of civilization and education.
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Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.
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A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.
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At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love. I had not imagined there was anything so delicious in the world. From that moment until I was thirty-eight, mathematics was my chief interest and my chief source of happiness.
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I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
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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.
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I used often to go to America during Prohibition, and there was far more drunkenness there then than before the prohibition of pornography has much the same effect.
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Unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is meaningless.
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There are certain things that our age needs. It needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.
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RELIGION: A set of beliefs held as dogmas, dominating the conduct of life, going beyond or contrary to evidence, and inculcated by methods which are emotional or authoritarian, not intellectual.
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I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness.
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Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
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There are two motives for reading a book one, that you enjoy it the other, that you can boast about it.
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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.
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Stupidity and unconscious bias often work more damage than venality.
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No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.
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Even in civilized mankind faint traces of monogamous instinct can be perceived.
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There was, I think, never any reason to believe in any innate superiority of the male, except his superior muscle.
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Machines have altered our way of life, but not our instincts. Consequently, there is maladjustment.
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