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Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell Quotes

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Famous Bertrand Russell Quotes

“So far I have been speaking of theoretical science, which is an attempt to understand the world. Practical science, which is an attempt to change the world, has been important from the first, and has continually increased in importance, until it has almost ousted theoretical science from men's thoughts.”

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Book:History of Western Philosophy
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“The triumph of science has been mainly due to its practical utility, and there has been an attempt to divorce this aspect from that of theory, thus making science more and more a technique, and less and less a doctrine as to the nature of the world. The penetration of this point of view to philosophers is very recent.”

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Book:History of Western Philosophy
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“Very few men can be genuinely happy in a life involving continual self-assertion against the skepticism of the mass of mankind, unless they can shut themselves up in a coterie and forget the cold outer world. The man of science has no need of a coterie, since he is thought well of by everybody except his colleagues. The artist, on the contrary, is in the painful situation of having to choose between being despised and being despicable.”

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Book:The Conquest of Happiness
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“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points.”

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Book:Mortals and Others, Volume II: American Essays 1931-1935
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“In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.”

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Author:Bertrand Russell
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“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”

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Author:Bertrand Russell
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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.”

PeopleWorldWholeProblemWisdomCertainEducationDoubtFoolConfidenceHumorousIntelligenceWittyLibertarianFoolishCleverCertaintyParadoxThought ProvokingAnarchyIronicLibertarianismSkepticismWiserFoolishnessSkepticalPolitical PhilosophyFanaticsFanaticismHeresyInternational RelationsBeing WiseMake You ThinkSkepticFooledDoubtedIntelligent ManClever ManWisest ManFools And FoolishnessFools And WiseFoolish ManWise WisdomWorld ProblemsFaith And DoubtStupidity Of ManOverconfidentDoubt And Certainty
Author:Bertrand Russell
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“I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.”

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Book:Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
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“If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.”

PeopleIfsWorldYearsTodayHappinessNumbersHappyPursuitParadiseUnhappinessBeing HappyPursuit Of HappinessHippieWorld TodayGreat HappinessLarge NumbersHappy PeoplePeace And HappinessInner HappinessJust Be HappySecret To HappinessLooking For HappinessUnhappy PeopleAttaining HappinessOthers HappinessPerfect HappinessHappy And ContentAchieving HappinessMy Own Happiness
Author:Bertrand Russell
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“Every isolated passion, is, in isolation, insane; sanity may be defined as synthesis of insanities. Every dominant passion generates a dominant fear, the fear of its non-fulfillment. Every dominant fear generates a nightmare, sometimes in form of explicit and conscious fanaticism, sometimes in paralyzing timidity, sometimes in an unconscious or subconscious terror which finds expression only in dreams. The man who wishes to preserve sanity in a dangerous world should summon in his own mind a parliament of fears, in which each in turn is voted absurd by all the others.”

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Author:Bertrand Russell
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“From that awful encounter of the soul with the outer world, enunciation, wisdom, and charity are born; and with their birth a new life begins. To take into the inmost shrine of the soul the irresistible forces whose puppets we seem to be - Death and change, the irrevocableness of the past, and the powerlessness of Man before the blind hurry of the universe from vanity to vanity - to feel these things and know them is to conquer them.”

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Book:Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
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“The world that I should wish to see would be one freed from the virulence of group hostilities and capable of realizing that happiness for all is to be derived rather from co-operation than from strife. I should wish to see a world in which education aimed at mental freedom rather than imprisoning the minds of the young in rigid armor of dogma calculated to protect them through life against the shafts of impartial evidence.”

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Book:Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
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“Understanding human nature must be the basis of any real improvement in human life. Science has done wonders in mastering the laws of the physical world, but our own nature is much less understood, as yet, than the nature of stars and electrons. When science learns to understand human nature, it will be able to bring a happiness into our lives which machines and the physical sciences have failed to create.”

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Book:Sceptical Essays
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“To speak seriously: the standards of "goodness" which are generally recognized by public opinion are not those which are calculated to make the world a happier place. This is due to a variety of causes, of which the chief is tradition, and the next most powerful is the unjust power of dominant classes.”

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Book:Sceptical Essays
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“The true function of logic ... as applied to matters of experience ... is analytic rather than constructive; taken a priori, it shows the possibility of hitherto unsuspected alternatives more often than the impossibility of alternatives which seemed prima facie possible. Thus, while it liberates imagination as to what the world may be, it refuses to legislate as to what the world is”

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Book:Our Knowledge of the External World
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“I hate the world and almost all the people in it. I hate the Labour Congress and the journalists who send men to be slaughtered, and the fathers who feel a smug pride when their sons are killed, and even the pacifists who keep saying human nature is essentially good, in spite of all the daily proofs to the contrary. I hate the planet and the human race—I am ashamed to belong to such a species.”

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Book:Autobiography
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“When you come to look into this argument from design, it is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience has been able to produce in millions of years.”

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Book:A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42
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“You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principle enemy of moral progress in the world.”

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Book:The basic writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959
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“A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.”

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Book:Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
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“Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.”

PeopleIfsWorldWayHumansKindFactsTogetherDiesLove IsWiseThis WorldPlanetsHatredCharityFoolishToleranceHuman LifeTolerateInterconnectedInterconnectednessContinuation
Author: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 almost all friendships would be dissolved; the second effect, however, might be excellent, for a world without any friends would be felt to be intolerable, and we should learn to like each other without needing a veil of illusion to conceal from ourselves that we did not think each other absolutely perfect.”

IfsThinkingWorldShouldFirstsMightWould BeGivenFeltFriendshipPerfectMagicEffectsFriendsIllusionExcellentSocialistVeilsConcealingNobody's Perfect
Book:The Conquest of Happiness
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