Bertrand Russell Quotes

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Herd pressure is to be judged by two things: first, its intensity, and second, its direction.

Bertrand Russell
In astronomy, the law of gravitation is plainly better worth knowing than the position of a particular planet on a particular night, or even on every night throughout a year. There are in the law a splendor and simplicity and sense of mastery which illuminate a mass of otherwise uninteresting details....

Bertrand Russell
Thus it would seem that wherever we infer from perceptions, it is only structure that we can validly infer; and structure is what can be expressed by mathematical logic, which includes mathematics.

Bertrand Russell
We want to express physical laws in such a way that it shall be obvious when we are expressing the same law by reference to two different systems of co-ordinates, so that we shall not be misled into supposing we have different laws when we have one law in different words. This is accomplished by the method of tensors.

Bertrand Russell
I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose.

Bertrand Russell
It is no credit to the orthodox that they do not now believe all the absurdities that were believed 150 years ago. The gradual emasculation of the Christian doctrine has been effected in spite of the most vigorous resistance, and solely as the result of the onslaughts of freethinkers.

Bertrand Russell
The whole of theology, in regard to hell no less than to heaven, takes it for granted that Man is what is of most importance in the Universe of created beings. Since all theologians are men, this postulate has met with little opposition.

Bertrand Russell
For a good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which make it seem, at times, like a live teacher. Notational irregularities are often the first sign of philosophical errors, and a perfect notation would be a substitute for thought.

Bertrand Russell
The Mormons had a divine revelation in favour of polygamy, but under pressure from the United States Government they discovered that the revelation was not binding.

Bertrand Russell
The essential characteristic of scientific technique is the utilization of natural forces in ways not evident to the totally uninstructed.

Bertrand Russell
The man of science looks for facts that are significant, in the sense of leading to general laws; and such facts are frequently quite devoid of intrinsic interest.

Bertrand Russell
It is the things for which there is no evidence that are believed with passion.

Bertrand Russell
To say that we live in an age of science is a commonplace, but like most commonplaces it is only partially true. From the point of view of our predecessors, if they could view our society, we should, no doubt, appear to be very scientific, but from the point of view of our successors it is probable that the exact opposite would seem to be the case.

Bertrand Russell
The time has come, or is about to come, when only large-scale civil disobedience, which should be nonviolent, can save the populations from the universal death which their governments are preparing for them.

Bertrand Russell
Mathematics is only the art of saying the same thing in different words.

Bertrand Russell
Men sometimes speak as though the progress of science must necessarily be a boon to mankind, but that, I fear, is one of the comfortable nineteenth century delusions which our more disillusioned age must discard.

Bertrand Russell
In adolescence, I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was restrained by the desire to know more mathematics. Now, on the contrary, I enjoy life; I might almost say that with every year that passes I enjoy it more.

Bertrand Russell
The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading

Bertrand Russell
It is permissible with certain precautions to speak in print of coitus, but it is not permissible to employ the monosyllabic synonym for this word.

Bertrand Russell
Logic is concerned with the real world just as truly as zoology [is].

Bertrand Russell
Man is a part of Nature, not something contrasted with Nature.

Bertrand Russell
Very few men can be genuinely happy in a life involving continual self-assertion against the skepticism of the mass of mankind, unless they can shut themselves up in a coterie and forget the cold outer world. The man of science has no need of a coterie, since he is thought well of by everybody except his colleagues. The artist, on the contrary, is in the painful situation of having to choose between being despised and being despicable.

Bertrand Russell
But we are not likely to find science returning to the crude form of causality believed in by Fijians and philosophers of which the type is "lightning causes thunder."

Bertrand Russell
The sea, the stars, the night wind in waste places, mean more to me than even the human beings I love best.

Bertrand Russell
The pleasure in planned construction is one of the most powerful motives in men who combine intelligence with energy; whatever can be constructed according to a plan, such men will endeavor to construct.

Bertrand Russell
There seems scarcely any limit to what could be done in the way of producing a good world, if only men would use science wisely.

Bertrand Russell
It is one of the defects of modern higher education that it has become too much a training in the acquisition of certain kinds of skill, and too little an enlargement of the mind and heart by an impartial survey of the world.

Bertrand Russell
A generation educated in fearless freedom will have wider and bolder hopes than are possible to us

Bertrand Russell
Science is what you more or less know and philosophy is what you do not know.

Bertrand Russell
No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate?

Bertrand Russell