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Bertrand Russell

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Someone asked [Bertrand] Russell at some meeting: 'Lord Russell, what will you say when you die and are brought face to face with your Maker?' He replied without hesitation: 'God,' I shall say, 'God, why did you make the evidence for your existence so insufficient?' - A. J. Ayer

... as I grew up I became increasingly interested in philosophy, of which they [his family] profoundly disapproved. Every time the subject came up they repeated with unfailing regularity, 'What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.' After some fifty or sixty repetitions, this remark ceased to amuse me. - Bertrand Russell

... broadly speaking, anything done against kings was to be applauded - unless, indeed, it were done by priests, like Becket, in which case one sided with the king. - Bertrand Russell

Although this may seem a paradox, 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 inferring that he is an inexact man. - Bertrand Russell

Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. - Bertrand Russell

Christ believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. - Bertrand Russell

Christian humility is preached by the clergy, but practised only by the lower classes. - Bertrand Russell

Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes. - Bertrand Russell

Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver ... in the end, the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own. - Bertrand Russell

Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery. - Bertrand Russell

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. - Bertrand Russell

Government can easily exist without law, but law cannot exist without government. - Bertrand Russell

I am firm; you are obstinate; he is a pig-headed fool. - Bertrand Russell

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. ... But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. - Bertrand Russell

I think that bad philosophers may have a certain influence, good philosophers, never. - Bertrand Russell

I was taught a kind of theoretic republicanism which was prepared to tolerate a monarch so long as he recognized that he was an employee of the people and subject to dismissal if he proved unsatisfactory. My grandfather, who was no respecter of persons, used to explain this point of view to Queen Victoria, and she was not altogether sympathetic. - Bertrand Russell

I was told that the Chinese said they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic for an atheist. - Bertrand Russell

If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important. - Bertrand Russell

In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying. - Bertrand Russell

It's co-existence Or no existence. - Bertrand Russell

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