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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.

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
Choice
Axioms
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Socks
Choices
Sock
Select
Shoes
Infinite
Necessary
Number
Axiom

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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To a modern mind, it is difficult to feel enthusiastic about a virtuous life if nothing is going to be achieved by it.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.
Bertrand Russell
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A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.
Bertrand Russell
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All movements go too far.
Bertrand Russell
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Neither the Church nor modern public opinion condemns petting, provided it stops short at a certain point.
Bertrand Russell
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Physics, owing to the simplicity of its subject matter, has reached a higher state of development than any other science.
Bertrand Russell
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The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.
Bertrand Russell
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A man's acts are partly determined by spontaneous impulse, partly by the conscious and unconscious effects of the various groups to which he belongs.
Bertrand Russell
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Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
Bertrand Russell
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A physicist looks for causes that does not necessarily imply that there are causes everywhere. A man may look for gold without assuming that there is gold everywhere if he finds gold, well and good, if he doesn't he's had bad luck. The same is true when the physicists look for causes.
Bertrand Russell
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Reason may be a small force, but it is constant, and works always in one direction, while the forces of unreason destroy one another in futile strife.
Bertrand Russell
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If you question any candid person who is no longer young, he is very likely to tell you that, having tasted life in this world, he has no wish to begin again as a new boy in another.
Bertrand Russell
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Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the government.
Bertrand Russell
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A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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The resistance to a new idea increases by the square of its importance.
Bertrand Russell
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Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation.
Bertrand Russell
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One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
Bertrand Russell