Bertrand Russell Quotes

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Literature embodies what is general in particular circumstances whose universal significance shines through their individual dress; but mathematics endeavors to present whatever is most general in its purity, without any irrelevant trappings.

Bertrand Russell
I am sorry that I have had to leave so many problems unsolved. I always have to make this apology, but the world really is rather puzzling and I cannot help it.

Bertrand Russell
We know that the exercise of virtue should be its own reward, and it seems to follow that the enduring of it on the part of the patient should be its own punishment.

Bertrand Russell
Calculating machines do sums better than even the cleverest people… As arithmetic has grown easier, it has come to be less respected.

Bertrand Russell
The notion of causality has been greatly modified by the substitution of space-time for space and time... Thus geometry and causation become inextricably intertwined.

Bertrand Russell
Beggars do not envy millionaires, though of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful.

Bertrand Russell
Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully; after him, all have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat.

Bertrand Russell
There was, I think, never any reason to believe in any innate superiority of the male, except his superior muscle.

Bertrand Russell
Christianity offers reasons for not fearing death or the universe, and in so doing it fails to teach adequately the virtue of courage.

Bertrand Russell
War can only be abolished by the establishment of a world government.

Bertrand Russell
The atomists, unlike Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, sought to explain the world without introducing the notion of purpose or final cause.

Bertrand Russell
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.

Bertrand Russell
The philosophies that have been inspired by scientific technique are power philosophies, and tend to regard everything non-human as mere raw material. Ends are no longer considered; only the skillfulness of the process is valued. This also is a form of madness. It is, in our day, the most dangerous form, and the one against which a sane philosophy should provide an antidote

Bertrand Russell
Knowledge, as opposed to fantasies of wish-fulfillment, is difficult to come by.

Bertrand Russell
Scientific laws, when we have reason to think them accurate, are different in form from the common-sense rules which have exceptions: they are always, at least in physics, either differential equations or statistical averages.

Bertrand Russell
Unless we can know something without knowing everything, it is obvious that we can never know something.

Bertrand Russell
A machine is like a Djinn in the Arabian Nights: beautiful and beneficent to its master, but hideous and terrible to his enemies.

Bertrand Russell
In art nothing worth doing can be done without genius; in science even a very moderate capacity can contribute to a supreme achievement.

Bertrand Russell
Cynicism such as one finds very frequently among the most highly educated young men and women of the West, results from the combination of comfort and powerlessness.

Bertrand Russell
Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake.

Bertrand Russell
Inferences of Science and Common Sense differ from those of deductive logic and mathematics in a very important respect, namely, when the premises are true and the reasoning correct, the conclusion is only probable.

Bertrand Russell
In our complex world, there cannot be fruitful initiative without government, but unfortunately there can be government without initiative.

Bertrand Russell
In a Balkan country, not so many years ago, a party which had been beaten by a narrow margin in a general election retrieved its fortunes by shooting a sufficient number of the representatives of the other side to give it a majority.... Cromwell and Robespierre... acted likewise..

Bertrand Russell
To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind are prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error.

Bertrand Russell
Broadly speaking, we are in the middle of a race between human skill as a means and human folly as an end.

Bertrand Russell
Statistics, ideally, are accurate laws about large groups; they differ from other laws only in being about groups, not about individuals.

Bertrand Russell
A good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times make it almost seem like a live teacher.

Bertrand Russell
God and immortality, the central dogmas of the Christian religion, find no support in science.

Bertrand Russell
The experience of overcoming fear is extraordinarily delightful.

Bertrand Russell
It may be that God made the world, but that is no reason why we should not make it over.

Bertrand Russell