Bertrand Russell Quotes

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Logic, broadly speaking, is distinguished by the fact that its propositions can be put into a form in which they apply to anything whatever.

Bertrand Russell
Africans had to be taught that nudity is wicked; this was done very cheaply by missionaries.

Bertrand Russell
Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; no fire, no heroism, no intensity of though and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave.

Bertrand Russell
If we compare Europe with other continents, it is marked out as [another] persecuting continent.

Bertrand Russell
From the height of their disillusionment they look down upon those whom they despise as simple souls. For my part I have no sympathy with this outlook. All disenchantment is to me a malady, which, it is true, certain circumstances may render inevitable, but which none the less, when it occurs, is to be cured as soon as possible, not to be regarded as a higher form of wisdom.

Bertrand Russell
The more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs.

Bertrand Russell
It has become a commonplace that aggressiveness also often has its roots in fear. I am inclined to think that this theory has been pushed too far. [...] The type of aggressiveness that is the outcome of timidity is not, I think, that which inspires great leaders; the great leaders, I should say, have an exceptional self-confidence which is not only on the surface, but penetrates deep into the subconscious.

Bertrand Russell
History is valuable, to begin with, because it is true; and this, though not the whole of its value, is the foundation and condition of all the rest. That all knowledge, as such, is in some degree good, would appear to be at least probable; and the knowledge of every historical fact possesses this element of goodness, even if it posses no other.

Bertrand Russell
Among the Tibetans, one wife has many husbands, because men are too poor to support a whole wife.

Bertrand Russell
The painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the color which common sense says they 'really' have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear.

Bertrand Russell
Perhaps the nuclear physicists have come so near to the ultimate secrets that He thinks it time to bring their activities to a stop. And what simpler method could He devise than to let them carry their ingenuity to the point where they exterminate the human race?

Bertrand Russell
Why the dinosaurs died out is not known, but it is supposed to be because they had minute brains and devoted themselves to the gorwth of weapons of offense in the shape of numerous horns. However that may be, it was not through their line that life developed.

Bertrand Russell
Half the useful work in the world consists of combating the harmful work.

Bertrand Russell
Dora and I are now married, but just as happy as we were before.

Bertrand Russell
Reason may be a small force, but it is constant, and works always in one direction, while the forces of unreason destroy one another in futile strife.

Bertrand Russell
Thomas Aquinas states parenthetically, as something entirely obvious, that men are more rational than women. For my part, I see no evidence of this.

Bertrand Russell
It is not the uniformity of nature that should surprise us, for, by sufficient analytic ingenuity, any conceivable course of nature might be shown to exhibit uniformity. What should surprise us is the fact that the uniformity is simple enough for us to be able to discover it.

Bertrand Russell
The newspapers at one time said that I was dead but after carefully examining the evidence I came to the conclusion that this statement was false.

Bertrand Russell
Every housemaid expects at least once a week as much excitement as would have lasted a Jane Austen heroine throughout a whole novel.

Bertrand Russell
He will see himself and life and the world as truly as our human limitations will permit; realizing the brevity and minuteness of human life, he will realize also that in individual minds is concentrated whatever of value the known universe contains.

Bertrand Russell
Science does not aim at establishing immutable truths and eternal dogmas; its aim is to approach the truth by successive approximations, without claiming that at any stage final and complete accuracy has been achieved.

Bertrand Russell
If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full.

Bertrand Russell
The prudent man of science acquires a certain instinct as to the kind of uses which may be made of present scientific beliefs without incurring the danger of complete and utter refutation from the modifications likely to be introduced by subsequent discoveries.

Bertrand Russell
Metaphysics, or the attempt to conceive the world as a whole by means of thought, has been developed, from the first, by the union and conflict of two very different human impulses, the one urging men towards mysticism, the other urging them towards science.

Bertrand Russell
If two hitherto rival football teams, under the influence of brotherly love, decided to co-operate in placing the football first beyond one goal and then beyond the other, no one's happiness would be increased

Bertrand Russell
Some men are so impressed by what science knows that they forget what it does not know; others are so much more interested in what it does not know than in what it does that they belittle its achievements.

Bertrand Russell
None of the raw material of the world has smooth logical properties, but whatever appears to have such properties is constructed artificially to have them.

Bertrand Russell
Democracy has at least one merit, namely that a Member of Parliament cannot be stupider than his constituents, for the more stupid he is, the more stupid they were to elect him.

Bertrand Russell
When we have told how things behave when they are electrified, and under what circumstances they are electrified, we have told all there is to know

Bertrand Russell
We are told that Sin consists in acting contrary to God's commands, but we are also told that God is omnipotent. If He is, nothing contrary to His will can occur; therefore when the sinner disobeys His commands, He must have intended this to happen.

Bertrand Russell