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Humanistic ethics is based on the principle that only humans themselves can determine the criterion for virtue and not an authority transcending us.

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
Based
Authority
Humanistic
Principles
Criterion
Virtue
Transcending
Humans
Criteria
Ethics
Principle
Determine

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I believe that the abolition of private ownership of land and capital is a necessary step toward any world in which the nations are to live at peace with one another.
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The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress.
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Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
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If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument... The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination.
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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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The method of postulating what we want has many advantages they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.
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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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All serious innovation is only rendered possible by some accident enabling unpopular persons to survive.
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If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
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The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts.
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Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty-a beauty cold and austere ... yet sublimely pure and capable of stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.
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Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
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Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
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St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
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The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.
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Children, after being limbs of Satan in traditional theology and mystically illuminated angels in the minds of educational reformers, have reverted to being little devils not theological demons inspired by the evil one, but scientific Freudian abominations inspired by the unconscious.
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The evolution of our spirit is blazed on the dark background of eternity by our individual wakes. Every person can, if he/she wishes, leave a more or less brilliant wake behind them.
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