Bertrand Russell Quotes About Mankind
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The knowledge exists by which universal happiness can be secured; the chief obstacle to its utilization for that purpose is the teaching of religion. Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific cooperation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.
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Our individual life is brief, and perhaps the whole life of mankind will be brief if measured in astronomical scale
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Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.
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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 universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.
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There are certain things that our age needs, and certain things that it should avoid. It needs compassion and a wish that mankind should be happy; it needs the desire for knowledge and the determination to eschew pleasant myths; it needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.
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It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.
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Very few men can be genuinely happy in a life involving continual self-assertion against the skepticism of the mass of mankind, unless they can shut themselves up in a coterie and forget the cold outer world. The man of science has no need of a coterie, since he is thought well of by everybody except his colleagues. The artist, on the contrary, is in the painful situation of having to choose between being despised and being despicable.
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I consider the official Catholic attitude on divorce, birth control, and censorship exceedingly dangerous to mankind.
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The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation ... it is common to wish well to oneself, but in our technically unified world, wishing well to oneself is sure to be futile unless it is combined with wishing well to others.
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Much of the most important evils that mankind have to consider are those which they inflict upon each other through stupidity or malevolence or both.
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There is in Aristotle an almost complete absence of what may be called benevolence or philanthropy. The sufferings of mankind . . . there is no evidence that they cause him unhappiness except when the sufferers happen to be his friends.
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If life is to be fully human it must serve some end which seems, in some sense, outside human life, some end which is impersonal and above mankind, such as God or truth or beauty. Those who best promote life do not have life for their purpose. They aim rather at what seems like a gradual incarnation, a bringing into our human existence of something eternal, something that appears to imagination to live in a heaven remote from strife and failure and the devouring jaws of Time.
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With the introduction of agriculture mankind entered upon a long period of meanness, misery, and madness, from which they are only now being freed by the beneficent operation of the machine.
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The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.
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It appeared to me obvious that the happiness of mankind should be the aim of all action, and I discovered to my surprise that there were those who thought otherwise.
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The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
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Mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else.
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It may seem to your conceited to suppose that you can do anything important toward improving the lot of mankind. But this is a fallacy. You must believe that you can help bring about a better world. A good society is produced only by good individuals, just as truly as a majority in a presidential election is produced by the votes of single electors. Everybody can do something toward creating in his own environment kindly feelings rather than anger, reasonableness rather than hysteria, happiness rather than misery.
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I believe that Communism is necessary to the world, and I believe that the heroism of Russia has fired men's hopes in a way which was essential to the realization of Communism in the future. Regarded as a splendid attempt, without which ultimate success would have been very improbable, Bolshevism deserves the gratitude and admiration of all the progressive part of mankind.
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I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.
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In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.
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What science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.
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It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.
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It appeared to me that the dignity of which human existence is capable is not attainable by devotion to the mechanism of life , and that unless contemplation of eternal things is preserved, mankind will become no better than well-fed pigs.
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Mankind is divided into two classes: those who, being artificial, praise nature, and those who, being natural, praise art.
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It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
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Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
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Even in civilized mankind faint traces of monogamous instinct can be perceived.
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The atomic bomb embodies the results of a combination genius and patience as remarkable as any in the history of mankind.
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