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One of the most painful circumstances of recent advances in science is that each one makes us know less than we thought we did

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
Advances
Recent
Painful
Circumstances
Less
Science
Makes
Thought

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The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
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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.
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Neither acquiescence in skepticism nor acquiescence in dogma is what education should produce.
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It seems to us unwise to have insisted on teaching geometry to the younger Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, in order to make him a good king, but from Plato's point of view it was essential. He was sufficiently Pythagorean to think that without mathematics no true wisdom is possible.
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Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens.
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What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer
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Descartes, the father of modern philosophy ... would never-so he assures us-have been led to construct his philosophy if he had had only one teacher, for then he would have believed what he had been told but, finding that his professors disagreed with each other, he was forced to conclude that no existing doctrine was certain.
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It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
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Meantime, the world in which we exist has other aims. But it will pass away, burnt up in the fire of its own hot passions and from its ashes will spring a new and younger world, full of fresh hope, woth the light of morning in its eyes.
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The Axiom of Choice is necessary to select a set from an infinite number of socks, but not an infinite number of shoes.
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The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty.
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Sir Arthur Eddington deduces religion from the fact that atoms do not obey the laws of mathematics. Sir James Jeans deduces it from the fact that they do.
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We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think in fact they do so.
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Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.
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... the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be.
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It is a natural propensity to attribute misfortune to someone's malignity.
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Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.
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Televison allows thousands of people to laugh at the same joke and still remain alone.
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Undoubtedly the desire for food has been and still is one of the main causes of political events.
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I suggest to young professors that their first work should be written in a jargon only to be understood by the erudite few. With that behind them, they can ever after say what they have to say in a language 'understand of the people.'
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