E.S. Russell Quotes
I used to say that if you gave me a trillion dollars to build a sentient or conscious machine I would give it back. I could not honestly say I knew how it works.
The greatest asset of man is man. The wealth of any man is dependent upon the wealth of every other man. Abundance for one is impossible in an impoverished world.
What Galileo and Newton were to the seventeenth century, Darwin was to the nineteenth.
To be able to concentrate for a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement.
A railroad station? That was sort of a primitive airport, only you didn't have to take a cab 20 miles out of town to reach it.
If you have one wish, wish for everything to be exactly as it is. Then wait patiently for your wish to come true.
Here is a new car, a new iPhone. We buy. We discard. We buy again. In recent years, we've been doing it faster.
And it's very, very funny When you've lots and lots of money To be horrible to those with none! Be horrible to those with none!
Worry is a form of fear, and all forms of fear produce fatigue. A man who has learned not to feel fear will find the fatigue of daily life enormously diminished.
That the world is in a bad shape is undeniable, but there is not the faintest reason in history to suppose that Christianity offers a way out.
Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the government.
Who ever heard a theologian preface his creed, or a politician conclude his speech with an estimate of the probable error of his opinion?
To a mind of sufficient intellectual power, the whole of mathematics would appear trivial, as trivial as the statement that a four-footed animal is an animal.
Whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.
This illustrates an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences to which it gives rise.
Christ . . . said that a man who had looked after a woman lustfully had sinned as much as the man who had seduced her. How absurd!
Belief in a Divine mission is one of the many forms of certainty that have afflicted the human race.
You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.
The secrets to happiness include enterprise, exploration of one's interests and the overcoming of obstacles.
The difficulty is old, but none the less real. An omnipotent being who created a world containing evil not due to sin must Himself be at least partially evil.
Although it is a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out, sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation
I think it would be just to say the most essential characteristic of mind is memory, using this word in its broadest sense to include every influence of past experience on present reactions.
It is entirely clear that there is only one way in which great wars can be permanently prevented, and that is the establishment of an international government with a monopoly of serious armed force.
Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful; therefore the worse they are performed, the better.
The use of self control is like the use of brakes on train. It is useful when you find yourself in wrong direction but merely harmful when the direction is right
Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active.
I went to Salt Lake City and the Mormons tried to convert me, but when I found they forbade tea and tobacco I thought it was no religion for me.
Cruelty is, in theory, a perfectly adequate ground for divorce, but it may be interpreted so as to become absurd.
Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully; after him, all have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat.
This is one of those views which are so absolutely absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them.
There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them and feel justified in lying to them.
I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose.
I have come to realize that an early symptom of approaching mental illness is the belief that one's work is terribly important. If you consider your work very important you should take a day off.
In human relations one should penetrate to the core of loneliness in each person and speak to that.
America remained a land of promise for lovers of freedom. Even Byron, at a moment when he was disgusted with Napoleon for not committing suicide, wrote an eloquent stanza in praise of Washington.
My doctor said to me afterwards, 'When you were ill you behaved like a true philosopher. Every time you came to yourself you made a joke.' I never had a compliment that pleased me more.
Escape from boredom is one of the really powerful desires of almost all human beings.