Bertrand Russell Quotes

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The belief or unconscious conviction that all propositions are of the subject-predicate form — in other words, that every fact consists in some thing having some quality — has rendered most philosophers incapable of giving any account of the world of science and daily life.

Bertrand Russell
Patriotism which has the quality of intoxication is a danger not only to its native land but to the world, and "My country never wrong" is an even more dangerous maxim than "My country, right or wrong."

Bertrand Russell
Whatever knowledge we possess is either knowledge of particular facts or scientific knowledge.

Bertrand Russell
God and Satan alike are essentially human figures, the one a projection of ourselves, the other of our enemies.

Bertrand Russell
I can only say that, while my own opinions as to ethics do not satisfy me, other people's satisfy me still less.

Bertrand Russell
The desire for legitimate offspring is, in fact, according to the Catholic Church, the only motive which can justify sexual intercourse.

Bertrand Russell
Mathematicians do not read Plato, while those who read him know no mathematics...

Bertrand Russell
I do not think any reasonable person can doubt that in India, China and Japan, if the knowledge of birth control existed, the birthrate would fall very rapidly

Bertrand Russell
What makes a free thinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought, he finds a balance in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem.

Bertrand Russell
All that passes for knowledge can be arranged in a hierarchy of degrees of certainty, with arithmetic and the facts of perception at the top.

Bertrand Russell
In considering irregular appearances, there are certain very natural mistakes which must be avoided.

Bertrand Russell
Education, which was at first made universal in order that all might be able to read and write, has been found capable of serving quite other purposes. By instilling nonsense it unifies populations and generates collective enthusiasm.

Bertrand Russell
The taboo against nakedness is an obstacle to a decent attitude on the subject of sex.

Bertrand Russell
Einstein's theory of relativity is probably the greatest synthetic achievement of the human intellect up to the present time.

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
That Plato's Republic should have been admired, on its political side, by decent people, is perhaps the most astonishing example of literary snobbery in all history.

Bertrand Russell
It is only through imagination that men become aware of what the world might be; without it, 'progress' would become mechanical and trivial.

Bertrand Russell
The power of using abstractions is the essence of intellect, and with every increase in abstraction the intellectual triumphs of science are enhanced.

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy arises from an unusually obstinate attempt to arrive at real knowledge. What passes for knowledge in ordinary life suffers from three defects: it is cocksure, vague and self-contradictory. The first step towards philosophy consists in becoming aware of these defects, not in order to rest content with a lazy scepticism, but in order to substitute an amended kind of knowledge which shall be tentative, precise and self-consistent.

Bertrand Russell
It seems to us unwise to have insisted on teaching geometry to the younger Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, in order to make him a good king, but from Plato's point of view it was essential. He was sufficiently Pythagorean to think that without mathematics no true wisdom is possible.

Bertrand Russell
So far I have been speaking of theoretical science, which is an attempt to understand the world. Practical science, which is an attempt to change the world, has been important from the first, and has continually increased in importance, until it has almost ousted theoretical science from men's thoughts.

Bertrand Russell
What will be the good of the conquest of leisure and health, if no one remembers how to use them?

Bertrand Russell
When the journey from means to end is not too long, the means themselves are enjoyed if the end is ardently desired.

Bertrand Russell
Dimensions, in geometry, are a development of order. The conception of a limit, which underlies all higher mathematics, is a serial conception. There are parts of mathematics which do not depend upon the notion of order, but they are very few in comparison with the parts in which this notion is involved.

Bertrand Russell
A man's acts are partly determined by spontaneous impulse, partly by the conscious and unconscious effects of the various groups to which he belongs.

Bertrand Russell
So far as scientific evidence goes, the universe has crawled by slow stages to a somewhat pitiful result on this earth, and is going to crawl by still more pitiful stages to a condition of universal death.

Bertrand Russell
All great books contain boring portions, and all great lives have contained uninteresting stretches.

Bertrand Russell
It is poetic imagination, not science, which presents Time as despotic lord of the world, with all the irresponsible frivolity of a child.

Bertrand Russell
The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty.

Bertrand Russell
Curious learning not only makes unpleasant things less unpleasant but also makes pleasant things more pleasant.

Bertrand Russell