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

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines.
Bertrand Russell
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Literature is inexhaustible, with every book a homage to infinity
Bertrand Russell
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Worry is a form of fear, and all forms of fear produce fatigue. A man who has learned not to feel fear will find the fatigue of daily life enormously diminished.
Bertrand Russell
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I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds.
Bertrand Russell
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The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.
Bertrand Russell
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One of the most interesting and harmful delusions to which men and nations can be subjected is that of imagining themselves special instruments of the Divine Will.
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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Grasshopper always wrong in argument with chicken.
Bertrand Russell
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I have throughout been curious about how much we can be said to know and with what degree of certainty or doubtfulness.
Bertrand Russell
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Folly is perennial and yet the human race has survived.
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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The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
Bertrand Russell
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Something of the hermit's temper is an essential element in many forms of excellence, since it enables men to resist the lure of popularity, to pursue important work in spite of general indifference or hostility, and arrive at opinions which are opposed to prevalent errors.
Bertrand Russell
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It is a natural propensity to attribute misfortune to someone's malignity.
Bertrand Russell
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For the learning of every virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgment the best discipline is philosophy.
Bertrand Russell
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Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Bertrand Russell
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No opinion has ever been too errant to become a creed.
Bertrand Russell
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Fervent religious believers sacrifice pleasures of the body, but instead enjoy pleasures of the mind, including the joy of knowing that those men who didn't follow their religion would be tortured for eternity.
Bertrand Russell
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To create a healthy philosophy you should renounce metaphysics but be a good mathematician.
Bertrand Russell
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The mind is a strange machine which can combine the materials offered to it in the most astonishing ways.
Bertrand Russell