Quotes by Bertrand Russell
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
Drunkenness is temporary suicide.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
Not... what opinions are held, but... how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, [liberal] opinions are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
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.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
The main thing needed to make men happy is intelligence.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
Common sense, however it tries, cannot avoid being surprised from time to time.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
We have two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice and another which we practice but seldom preach.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
Drunkenness is temporary suicide.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
In America everybody is of opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
The best practical advice I can give to the present generation is to practice the virtue which the Christians call love.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
The total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic.
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Bertrand Russell Quotes