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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
Infinite
Necessary
Number
Axiom
Choice
Axioms
Numbers
Socks
Choices
Sock
Select
Shoes

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.
Bertrand Russell
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I am paid by the word, so I always write the shortest words possible.
Bertrand Russell
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There is darkness without and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, nor vastness anywhere only triviality for a moment and then nothing.
Bertrand Russell
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The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
Bertrand Russell
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The time has come, or is about to come, when only large-scale civil disobedience, which should be nonviolent, can save the populations from the universal death which their governments are preparing for them.
Bertrand Russell
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When it was first proposed to establish laboratories at Cambridge, Todhunter, the mathematician, objected that it was unnecessary for students to see experiments performed, since the results could be vouched for by their teachers, all of them of the highest character, and many of them clergymen of the Church of England.
Bertrand Russell
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No man treats a motorcar as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behavior to sin he does not say, 'You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.' He attempts to find out what is wrong and to set it right.
Bertrand Russell
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I was told that The Chinese said they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic for an atheist.
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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Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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The difficulty is old, but none the less real. An omnipotent being who created a world containing evil not due to sin must Himself be at least partially evil.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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The essence of life is doing things for their own sakes.
Bertrand Russell
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Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery, and in such a world hopes could only be irrational.
Bertrand Russell
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The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.
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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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
Bertrand Russell
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There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
Bertrand Russell
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Dread of disaster makes everybody act in the very way that increases the disaster. Psychologically the situation is analogous to that of people trampled to death when there is a panic in a theatre caused by a cry of `Fire!'.
Bertrand Russell