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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
Science
Makes
Thought
Advances
Recent
Painful
Circumstances
Less

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Whatever we know without inference is mental.
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No opinion has ever been too errant to become a creed.
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Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God, or with mystic insight, or with any of the matters with which the more elevated and spiritual moralists are concerned.
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The saviors of the world, society's last hope.
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There are infinite possibilities of error, and more cranks take up fashionable untruths than unfashionable truths.
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Machines have altered our way of life, but not our instincts. Consequently, there is maladjustment.
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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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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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The essence of education is that it is a change effected in the organism to satisfy the operator.
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I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy.
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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.
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Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.
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Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.
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Science does not aim at establishing immutable truths and eternal dogmas its aim is to approach the truth by successive approximations, without claiming that at any stage final and complete accuracy has been achieved.
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To the young I should offer two maxims: Don't accept superficial solutions of difficult problems. It is better to do a little good than much harm. I should not offer anything more specific every young person should decide on his or her own credo.
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Unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is meaningless.
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Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth.
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If the State does not acquire supremacy over [vast private] enterprises, it becomes their puppet, and they become the real State.
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All's well that ends well which is the epitaph I should put on my tombstone if I were the last man left alive.
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The human race may well become extinct before the end of the century. Speaking as a mathematician, I should say the odds are about three to one against survival.
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