Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

Philosopher, Mathematician

Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, logician, and social critic known for his work in analytical philosophy and advocacy for peace.

Men Thinking People Philosophy Believe Science
Born
May 18, 1872
Died
February 2, 1970
Quotes
1.2K
Rank
#128

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Bertrand Russell quotes (page 12 of 60)

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Bertrand Russell Philosopher, Mathematician
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"I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social. Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give wisdom at more mundane times. Social: to see in imagination the society that is to be created, where individuals grow freely, and where hate and greed and envy die because there is nothing to nourish them. These things I believe, and the world, for all its horrors, has left me unshaken."

Beautiful Hate Believe
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"All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can only be refuted by science: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy."

People Enemy Suffering
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"Dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the source of opinion; it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to unbelievers; it asks of its disciples that they should inhibit natural kindliness in favor of systematic hatred."

Wisdom Intelligent Hatred
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"Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones."

Fear Believe Animal
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"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly."

Life Money Freedom
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"I feel as if one would only discover on one's death-bed what one ought to have lived for, and realise too late that one's life has been wasted. Any passionate and courageous life seems good in itself, yet one feels that some element of delusion is involved in giving so much passion to any humanly attainable object. And so irony creeps into the very springs of one's being."

Spring Passion Giving
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"It may seem to your conceited to suppose that you can do anything important toward improving the lot of mankind. But this is a fallacy. You must believe that you can help bring about a better world. A good society is produced only by good individuals, just as truly as a majority in a presidential election is produced by the votes of single electors. Everybody can do something toward creating in his own environment kindly feelings rather than anger, reasonableness rather than hysteria, happiness rather than misery."

Believe Conceited Hysteria
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"Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover."

Humility Math Science
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"I must, before I die, find some way to say the essential thing that is in me, that I have never said yet -- a thing that is not love or hate or pity or scorn, but the very breath of life, fierce and coming from far away, bringing into human life the vastness and the fearful passionless force of non-human things."

Hate Essentials Vastness
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"How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?"

World Cruelty Endure
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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."

Two Justice Progress
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"It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather that the hope of creatingfuture dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young."

Education Hope Teaching
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"True happiness for human beings is possible only to those who develop their godlike potentialities to the utmost."

True Happiness Godlike Humans
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"When the state intervenes to insure the indoctrination of some doctrine, it does so because there is no conclusive evidence in favor of that doctrine."

Government Doe Doctrine
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"The immense majority of intellectually eminent men disbelieve in the Christian religion, but they conceal the fact in public, because they are afraid of losing their incomes."

Christian Men Religion
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"The human race may well become extinct before the end of the century. Speaking as a mathematician, I should say the odds are about three to one against survival."

Race Odds Survival
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"Science is at no moment quite right, but it is seldom quite wrong, and has, as a rule, a better chance of being right than the theories of the unscientific. It is, therefore, rational to accept it hypothetically."

Chance Moments Accepting
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"There is a possibility in human minds of something mysterious as the night-wind, deep as the sea, calm as the stars, and strong as Death, a mystic contemplation, the “intellectual love of God.” Those who have known it cannot believe in wars any longer, or in any kind of hot struggle. If I could give to others what has come to me in this way, I could make them too feel the futility of fighting. But I do not know how to communicate it: when I speak, they stare, applaud, or smile, but do not understand."

Strong Stars War
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"Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent"

Nature Civilization Openness
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"What will be the good of the conquest of leisure and health, if no one remembers how to use them?"

Use Leisure Remember
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