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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.

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
Body
Instead
Tortured
Mind
Joy
Believers
Would
Knowing
Pleasures
Men
Pleasure
Believer
Religious
Eternity
Religion
Including
Enjoy
Sacrifice
Didn
Follow
Fervent

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In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.
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There is an element of the busybody in our conception of virtue: unless a man makes himself a nuisance to a great many people, we do not think he can be an exceptionally good man.
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We must be skeptical even of our skepticism.
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My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.
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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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Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.
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A good man will never suspect his friends of shady actions: this is part of his goodness. A good man will never be suspected by the public of using his goodness to screen villains: this is part of his utility
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You may, if you are an old-fashioned schoolmaster, wish to consider yourself full of universal benevolence and at the same time derive great pleasure from caning boys. In order to reconcile these two desires you have to persuade yourself that caning
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What was exciting in the Victorian Age, would leave a man of franker epoch quite unmoved. The more prudes restrict the permissible degree of sexual appeal, the less is required to make such an appeal effective.
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From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization of Islam flourished. What was lost to christendom at this time was not lost to civilization, but quite the contrary.
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Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.
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There is no greater reason for children to honour parents than for parents to honour children except, that while the children are young, the parents are stronger than children.
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A European who goes to New York and Chicago sees the future... when he goes to Asia he sees the past.
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One of the most powerful of all our passions is the desire to be admired and respected.
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It is likely that America will be more important during the next century or two, but after that it may well be the turn of China.
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Next to worry probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy.
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People seem good while they are oppressed, but they only wish to become oppressors in their turn: life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
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