Bertrand Russell Quotes
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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.
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To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
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Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable.
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He asked my religion and I replied 'agnostic'. He asked how to spell it, and remarked with a sigh: 'Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God. This remark kept me cheerful for about a week.
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What a monstrous thing that a University should teach journalism! I thought that was only done at Oxford. This respect for the filthy multitude is ruining civilisation.
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The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.
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I regard religion as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.
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Written words differ from spoken words in being material structures. A spoken word is a process in the physical world, having an essential time-order; a written word is a series of pieces of matter, having an essential space-order.
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Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for co-operation with oneself.
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When I found myself regarded as respectable, I began to wonder what sins I had committed. I must be very wicked, I thought. I began to engage in the most uncomfortable introspection.
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The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.
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No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is; no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.
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It is generally admitted that most grown-up people, however regrettably, will try to have a good time.
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Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
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If, when a man writes a poem or commits a murder, the bodily movements involved in his act result solely from physical causes, it would seem absurd to put up a statue to him in the one case and to hang him in the other.
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No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.
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All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in infering that he is an inexact man.
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This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible and is something which no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate. I will not pretend to obey a government which is organising a mass massacre of mankind.
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Ironclads and Maxim guns must be the ultimate arbiters of metaphysical truth.
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A world full of happiness is not beyond human power to create; the obstacles imposed by inanimate nature are not insuperable. The real obstacles lie in the heart of man, and the cure for these is a firm hope, informed and fortified by thought.
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A world without delight and without affection is a world destitute of value.
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If human nature were unchangeable, as ignorant people still suppose it to be, the situation would indeed be hopeless.
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Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.
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To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.