"We are all prone to the malady of the introvert who with the manifold spectacle of the world spread out before him, turns away and gazes only upon the emptiness within."
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Quote collection
Bertrand Russell quotes (page 29 of 60)
1.2K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed."
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"When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory."
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"In obedience to the feeling of reality, we shall insist that, in the analysis of propositions, nothing "unreal" is to be admitted. But, after all, if there is nothing unreal, how, it may be asked, could we admit anything unreal? The reply is that, in dealing with propositions, we are dealing in the first instance with symbols, and if we attribute significance to groups of symbols which have no significance, we shall fall into the error of admitting unrealities, in the only sense in which this is possible, namely, as objects described."
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"Politics is largely governed by sententious platitudes which are devoid of truth"
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"Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it."
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"We know too much and feel too little."
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"Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one."
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"Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies, and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him."
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"Very many people spend money in ways quite different from those that their natural tastes would enjoin, merely because the respect of their neighbors depends upon their possession of a good car and their ability to give good dinners. As a matter of fact, any man who can obviously afford a car but genuinely prefers travels or a good library will in the end be much more respected than if he behaved exactly like everyone else."
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"It is only through imagination that men become aware of what the world might be; without it, ‘progress’ would become mechanical and trivial."
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"Christianity offers reasons for not fearing death or the universe, and in so doing it fails to teach adequately the virtue of courage."
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"A word is used "correctly" when the average hearer will be affected by it in the way intended. This is a psychological, not a literary, definition of "correctness". The literary definition would substitute, for the average hearer, a person of high education living a long time ago; the purpose of this definition is to make it difficult to speak or write correctly."
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"Collective wisdom, alas, is no adequate substitute for the intelligence of individuals. Individuals who opposed received opinions have been the source of all progress, both moral and intellectual. They have been unpopular, as was natural."
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"If you had the power to destroy the world, would you do so?"
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"Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark."
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"Any philosophy worth taking seriously would have to be built upon a firm foundation of unyielding despair."
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"Mathematics is, I believe, the chief source of the belief in eternal and exact truth, as well as a sensible intelligible world."
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"BERTRAND RUSSELL, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism We've associated that word philosophy with academic study that in its own way has gotten so far beyond the layman that if you read contemporary philosophy you've no clue, because it's almost become math. And it's odd that if you don't do that and you call yourself a philosopher that you always get 'homespun' attached to it."
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"As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our trouble. . . . No Catholic, for instance, takes seriously the text which says that a Bishop should be the husband of one wife."
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