“People will tell us that without the consolations of religion they would be intolerably unhappy. So far as this is true, it is a coward's argument. Nobody but a coward would consciously choose to live in a fool's paradise. When a man suspects his wife of infidelity, he is not thought the better of for shutting his eyes to the evidence. And I cannot see why ignoring evidence should be contemptible in one case and admirable in the other.”

— Bertrand Russell

"Is There a God?" (1952)
1950s

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Bertrand Russell 562

logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and politi… 1872–1970

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