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The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilized men.
Bertrand Russell -
The degree of one's emotion varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts – the less you know the hotter you get.
Bertrand Russell
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To choose one sock from each of infinitely many pairs of socks requires the Axiom of Choice, but for shoes the Axiom is not needed.
Bertrand Russell -
It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go. The difference is that you can compel your car to go to a garage, but you cannot compel Hitler to go to a psychiatrist.
Bertrand Russell -
The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.
Bertrand Russell -
We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think – in fact they do so.
Bertrand Russell -
Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing what physics really asserts, since the words of everyday life are not sufficiently abstract. Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.
Bertrand Russell -
Our words tend to conceal what is private and particular in our impressions, and to make us believe that different people live in a common world to a greater extent than is in fact the case.
Bertrand Russell
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A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.
Bertrand Russell -
I observe that a very large portion of the human race does not believe in God and suffers no visible punishment in consequence. And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence.
Bertrand Russell -
I am sure that university life would be better, both intellectually and morally, if most university students had temporary childless marriages. This would afford a solution to the sexual urge neither restless nor surreptitious, neither mercenary nor casual, and of such a nature that it need not take up time which ought to be given to work.
Bertrand Russell -
To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.
Bertrand Russell -
Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a long period, as, for example, ancient Egypt persisted, or does it necessarily contain within itself forces which must bring either decay or explosion?
Bertrand Russell -
...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.
Bertrand Russell
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The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich.
Bertrand Russell -
In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces; but in thought, in aspiration, we are free, free from our fellowmen, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the tyranny of death.
Bertrand Russell -
When I was 4 years old … I dreamt that I'd been eaten by a wolf, and to my great surprise I was in the wolf's stomach and not in heaven.
Bertrand Russell -
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
Bertrand Russell -
The conception of the necessary unit of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of the imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the straitwaistcoated benevolent institution which idealism palms off as the totality of being.
Bertrand Russell -
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one – particularly if he plays golf, which he usually does.
Bertrand Russell
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If the Communists conquered the world, it would be very unpleasant for a while, but not forever. But if the human race is wiped out, that is the end.
Bertrand Russell -
Competition for power is of two sorts: between organizations, and between individuals for leadership within an organization.
Bertrand Russell -
Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.
Bertrand Russell -
I am sorry to say that at the moment I am so busy as to be convinced that life has no meaning whatever... I do not see that we can judge what would be the result of the discovery of truth, since none has hitherto been discovered.
Bertrand Russell