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.
BERTRAND RUSSELLTo write a tragedy, a man must feel the tragedy. To feel tragedy, a man must be aware of the world in which he lives. Not only with his mind, but with his blood and sinews.
More Bertrand Russell Quotes
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Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
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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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I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.
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Is there any knowledge in the world that is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?
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It 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.
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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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Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.
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To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.
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No one ever gossips about the virtues of others.
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The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
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The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
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Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
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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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None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error.
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Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
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Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.
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To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
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Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts that could not exist without it.
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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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Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
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No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
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What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
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Your writing is never as good as you hoped, but never as bad as you feared.
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A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.
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One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.
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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