"it [is] possible to suppose that, if Russia is allowed to have peace, an amazing industrial development may take place, making Russia a rival of the United States."
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Quote collection
Bertrand Russell quotes (page 48 of 60)
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"I must confess that I am deeply troubled. I fear that human beings are intent upon acting out a vast deathwish and that it lies with us now to make every effort to promote resistance to the insanity and brutality of policies which encompass the extermination of hundreds of millions of human beings."
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"Thee will find out in time that I have a great love of professing vile sentiments, I don't know why, unless it springs from long efforts to avoid priggery."
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"Heretical views arise when the truth is uncertain, and it is only when the truth is uncertain that censorship is invoked."
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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."
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"To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need of our civilisation."
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"Science has made unrestricted national sovereignty incompatible with human survival. The only possibilities are now world government or death."
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"Orthodoxy is the death of intelligence."
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"There are still many people in America who regard depressions as acts of God. I think Keynes proved that the responsibility for these occurrences does not rest with Providence."
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"All knowledge, we feel, must be built up upon our instinctive beliefs; and if these are rejected, nothing is left."
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"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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"Those who advocate common usage in philosophy sometimes speak in a manner that suggests the mystique of the 'common man.'"
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"The white tails of rabbits, according to some theologians, have a purpose, namely to make it easier for sportsmen to shoot them."
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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."
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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."
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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."
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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"
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"I do so hate to leave this world."
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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"
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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."
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