Bertrand Russell Quotes - Page 8

• I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious.

  Bertrand Russell

  Thinking, Intelligence, Sometimes

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.73, Routledge

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• When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God.

  Bertrand Russell

  England And America, Support, Lightning

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.92, Routledge

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• The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more amazing becomes what human beings have achieved.

  Bertrand Russell

  Achievement, Faces, Realizing

  Bertrand Russell (1993). “The Quotable Bertrand Russell”

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• HELL: A place where the police are German, the motorists French and the cooks English.

  Bertrand Russell

  God, Travel, Police

  Bertrand Russell (1993). “The Quotable Bertrand Russell”

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• Science is at no moment quite right, but it is seldom quite wrong, and has, as a rule, a better chance of being right than the theories of the unscientific. It is, therefore, rational to accept it hypothetically.

  Bertrand Russell

  Chance, Moments, Accepting

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• Life and hope for the world are to be found only in the deeds of love.

  Bertrand Russell

  Life, Hope, World

  Bertrand Russell (2006). “Political Ideals”, p.90, Cosimo, Inc.

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• For love of domination we must substitute equality; for love of victory we must substitute justice; for brutality we must substitute intelligence; for competition we must substitute cooperation. We must learn to think of the human race as one family.

  Bertrand Russell

  Equality, Thinking, Race

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• Human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those who seem least to demand it.

  Bertrand Russell

  Emotional, Giving, Feelings

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.101, Lulu Press, Inc

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• For my part, the thing I would wish to obtain from money would be leisure with security. But what the typical modern man desires to get with it is more money, with a view to ostentation, splendour, and the outshining of those who have hitherto been his equals.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Views, Wish

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.26, Lulu Press, Inc

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• The really useful education is that which follows the direction of the child's own instinctive interests, supplying knowledge for which it is seeking, not dry, detailed information wholly out of relation to its spontaneous desires.

  Bertrand Russell

  Children, Desire, Dry

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Proposed Roads to Freedom”, p.142, Booklassic

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• Men who allow their love of power to give them a distorted view of the world are to be found in every asylum: one man will think he is the Governor of the Bank of England, another will think he is the King, and yet another will think he is God. Highly similar delusions, if expressed by educated men in obscure language, lead to professorships of philosophy; and if expressed by emotional men in eloquent language, lead to dictatorships.

  Bertrand Russell

  Kings, Philosophy, Men

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Power: A New Social Analysis”, p.220, Routledge

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• No satisfaction based upon self-deception is solid, and however unpleasant the truth may be, it is better to face it once and for all, to get used to it, and to proceed to build your life in accordance with it.

  Bertrand Russell

  Self, Deception, May

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.72, Lulu Press, Inc

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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.

  Bertrand Russell

  Inspirational, Learning, Shining

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Fact and Fiction”, p.153, Routledge

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• In democratic countries, the most important private organizations are economic. Unlike secret societies, they are able to exercise their terrorism without illegality, since they do not threaten to kill their enemies, but only to starve them.

  Bertrand Russell

  Country, Exercise, Organization

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• Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

  Bertrand Russell

  Inspirational, Children, Pain

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Autobiography”, p.3, Routledge

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• Your writing is never as good as you hoped; but never as bad as you feared.

  Bertrand Russell

  Writing

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• If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Thinking, Years

  Bertrand Russell (1935). “Religion and science”

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• Televison allows thousands of people to laugh at the same joke and still remain alone.

  Bertrand Russell

  People, Laughing, Internet

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• All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can only be refuted by science: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.

  Bertrand Russell

  People, Enemy, Suffering

  "The Science to Save Us from Science". The New York Times Magazine, March 19, 1950.

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• When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since there is no criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but mutual hatred and an open or covert appeal to force.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Two, Issues

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.198, Simon and Schuster

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• The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.

  Bertrand Russell

  Work, Needs, World

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “In Praise of Idleness”, p.7, Lulu Press, Inc

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• In the daily lives of most men and women, fear plays a greater part than hope: they are more filled with the thought of the possessions that others may take from them, than of the joy that they might create in their own lives and in the lives with which they come in contact. It is not so that life should be lived.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Play, Joy

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Proposed Roads to Freedom”, p.135, Booklassic

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• We need a science to save us from science.

  Bertrand Russell

  Needs

  "High Points in the Work of the High Schools of New York City, Vol. 34". Book edited by Board of Education, p. 46, quoting "NY Times Magazine", 1952.

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• While economics is about how people make choice, sociology is about how they don't have any choice to make.

  Bertrand Russell

  People, Choices, Economics

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• Aristotle, in spite of his reputation, is full of absurdities. He says that children should be conceived in the Winter, when the wind is in the North, and that if people marry too young the children will be female. He tells us that the blood of females is blacker than that of males; that the pig is the only animal liable to measles; that an elephant suffering from insomnia should have its shoulders rubbed with salt, olive-oil, and warm water; that women have fewer teeth than men, and so on. Nevertheless, he is considered by the great majority of philosophers a paragon of wisdom.

  Bertrand Russell

  Wisdom, Children, Winter

  Bertrand Russell (1943). “An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish: A Hilarious Catalogue of Organized and Individual Stupidity”

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