Bertrand Russell Quotes - Page 38

• Is a man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water crawling impotently on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is he perhaps both as once?

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Water, Tiny

  Bertrand Russell (2008). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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• Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.

  Bertrand Russell

  Attitude, Believe, Mind

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Why I Am Not a Christian”, p.55, Lulu Press, Inc

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• The Church no longer contends that knowledge is in itself sinful, though it did so in its palmy days; but the acquisition of knowledge, even though not sinful, is dangerous, since it may lead to pride of intellect, and hence to a questioning of the Christian dogma.

  Bertrand Russell

  Christian, Pride, Church

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.45, Simon and Schuster

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• One must expect a war between U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. which will begin with the total destruction of London. I think the war will last 30 years, and leave a world without civilised people, from which everything will have to build afresh - a process taking (say) 500 years.

  Bertrand Russell

  War, Thinking, Years

  Letter to Gamel Brenan (September 1, 1945), "The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell" edited by Nicholas Griffin, (p. 410), 2002.

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• The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress.

  Bertrand Russell

  Two, Justice, Progress

  "Marriage and Morals". Book by Bertrand Russell, Ch. 20, p. 301, en.wikiquote.org. Marriage and Morals.

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• The fundamental defect of Christian ethics consists in the fact that it labels certain classes of acts 'sins' and others 'virtue' on grounds that have nothing to do with their social consequences.

  Bertrand Russell

  Christian, Class, Labels

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “Education and the Social Order”, p.73, Routledge

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• I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Thinking, Wish

  Bertrand Russell (1995). “My Philosophical Development”, p.23, Psychology Press

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• Moral progress has consisted in the main of protest against cruel customs, and of attempts to enlarge human sympathy.

  Bertrand Russell

  Progress, Moral, Protest

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Authority and the Individual”, p.30, Routledge

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• Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active.

  Bertrand Russell

  Imagination, Effort, Desire

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Political Ideals”, p.16, Bertrand Russell

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• In emancipation from the fears that beset the slave of circumstance he will experience a profound joy, and through all the vicissitudes of his outward life he will remain in the depths of his being a happy man.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Profound, Joy

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.133, Lulu Press, Inc

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• I do not think any reasonable person can doubt that in India, China and Japan, if the knowledge of birth control existed, the birthrate would fall very rapidly

  Bertrand Russell

  Fall, Thinking, Japan

  Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”, p.706, Psychology Press

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• He will see himself and life and the world as truly as our human limitations will permit; realizing the brevity and minuteness of human life, he will realize also that in individual minds is concentrated whatever of value the known universe contains.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mind, World, Realizing

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.133, Lulu Press, Inc

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• When we have told how things behave when they are electrified, and under what circumstances they are electrified, we have told all there is to know

  Bertrand Russell

  Circumstances, Behave, Knows

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• Africans had to be taught that nudity is wicked; this was done very cheaply by missionaries.

  Bertrand Russell

  Wicked, Done, Taught

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “The Impact of Science on Society”, p.20, Routledge

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• I suggest to young professors that their first work should be written in a jargon only to be understood by the erudite few. With that behind them, they can ever after say what they have to say in a language 'understand of the people.'

  Bertrand Russell

  People, Jargon, Firsts

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.66, Routledge

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• Shakespeare . . . If he does not give you delight, you had better ignore him [if you can].

  Bertrand Russell

  Giving, Doe, Delight

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• The doctrine (of) maintaining that the language of daily life, with words used in their ordinary meanings, suffices for philosophy . . . I find myself totally unable to accept . . . . Because it makes almost inevitable the perpetuation amongst philosophers of the muddle-headedness they have taken over from common sense.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Taken, Common Sense

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• The Stoic assures us that what is happening now will happen over and over again. [If so, Providende would] ultimately grow weary through despair.

  Bertrand Russell

  Despair, Stoic, Grows

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• The teaching of Christ, as it appears in the Gospels, has had extraordinarily little to do with the ethics of Christians.

  Bertrand Russell

  Christian, Teaching, Littles

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Why I Am Not a Christian”, p.50, Lulu Press, Inc

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• We have almost reached the point where praise of rationality is held to mark a man as an old fogey regrettably surviving from a bygone age.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Age, Praise

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.73, Routledge

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• Science has made unrestricted national sovereignty incompatible with human survival. The only possibilities are now world government or death.

  Bertrand Russell

  World Government, Survival, Possibility

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• To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need of our civilisation.

  Bertrand Russell

  War, Needs, Civilisation

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.6, Lulu Press, Inc

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• While I am as convinced a Socialist as the most ardent Marxian, I do not regard Socialism as a gospel of proletarian revenge, nor even, primarily, as a means of securing economic justice. I regard it primarily as an adjustment to machine production demanded by considerations of common sense, and calculated to increase the happiness, not only of proletarians, but of all except a tiny minority of the human race.

  Bertrand Russell

  Revenge, Mean, Race

  Bertrand Russell, Kenneth Blackwell (2008). “The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell”

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• Each act of cruelty is eternally a part of the universe; nothing that happens later can make that act good rather than bad, or can confer perfection on the whole of which it is a part.

  Bertrand Russell

  Perfection, Cruelty, Whole

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition”, p.467, Routledge

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• Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle.

  Bertrand Russell

  Struggle, Quality, Needs

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “In Praise of Idleness”, p.1, Lulu Press, Inc

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