Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand.
BERTRAND RUSSELLIt seems to me fundamental dishonesty, and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it’s useful and not because you think it’s true.
More Bertrand Russell Quotes
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The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
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One of the most powerful of all our passions is the desire to be admired and respected.
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Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
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Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
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Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of great fear.
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I consider the official Catholic attitude on divorce, birth control, and censorship exceedingly dangerous to mankind.
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I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
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A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.
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We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.
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The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so; at other times he thinks about other things, or, if it is night, about nothing at all.
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The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
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A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.
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Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
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The secret of happiness is very simple: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.
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Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
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This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered to me.
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No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
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Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives’ mouths.
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It’s easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.
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In all affairs, it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
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Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought of duty. To say that it is your duty to love so-and-so is the surest way to cause you to hate him of her.
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I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.
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Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it.
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Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
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Your writing is never as good as you hoped, but never as bad as you feared.
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Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
BERTRAND RUSSELL