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My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.


Bertrand Russell

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My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend ...
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VERONICA RANDOLPH BATTERSON

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BERTRAND RUSSELL We are all prone to the malady of the introvert who, with the manifold spectacle of the world spread...
BERTRAND RUSSELL A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
BERTRAND RUSSELL Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
BERTRAND RUSSELL A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not...
BERTRAND RUSSELL We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and a...
BERTRAND RUSSELL There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
BERTRAND RUSSELL [T]he infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they inven...
BERTRAND RUSSELL Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought o...
BERTRAND RUSSELL So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
BERTRAND RUSSELL There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate gov...
BERTRAND RUSSELL The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
BERTRAND RUSSELL This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape f...
BERTRAND RUSSELL Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying t...
BERTRAND RUSSELL I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with...
BERTRAND RUSSELL Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
BERTRAND RUSSELL The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and...
BERTRAND RUSSELL War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
BERTRAND RUSSELL Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface rela...
BERTRAND RUSSELL Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
BERTRAND RUSSELL The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
BERTRAND RUSSELL Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
BERTRAND RUSSELL Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ide...
BERTRAND RUSSELL Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with o...
BERTRAND RUSSELL It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which...
BERTRAND RUSSELL Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the i...
BERTRAND RUSSELL The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.
BERTRAND RUSSELL Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not reg...
BERTRAND RUSSELL