“I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. 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, What I Believe (1925)
“It is not rational arguments but emotions that cause belief in the after life. The most important of these emotions is the fear of death. If we genuinely and wholeheartedly believed in life after death, we should cease completely to fear death.”
— Bertrand Russell, Death as the Final Event of the Self (1957)