Bertrand Russell Quotes

I am delighted to know that Principia Mathematica can now be done by machinery. . . I am quite willing to believe that anything in deductive logic can be done by machinery.

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

At first it seems obvious, but the more you think about it the stranger the deductions from this axiom seem to become; in the end you cease to understand what is meant by it.

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

It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know-or care-about circumstances in the colonies.

The solution of the difficulties which formerly surrounded the mathematical infinite is probably the greatest achievement of which our age has to boast.

Whether science-and indeed civilization in general-can long survive depends upon psychology, that is to say, it depends upon what human beings desire.

We believe, first and foremost, what makes us feel that we are fine fellows.

It is only theory that makes men completely incautious.

One's work is never so bad as it appears on bad days, nor so good as it appears on good days.

... the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be.

Religion and Science are two aspects of social life, of which the former has been important as far back as we know anything of man

Undoubtedly the desire for food has been and still is one of the main causes of political events.

It is impossible to read in America, except on a train, because of the telephone. Everyone has a telephone, and it rings all day and most of the night.

The military superiority of Europe to Asia is not an eternal law of nature, as we are tempted to think, and our superiority in civilization is a mere delusion.

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

One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.

When I found myself regarded as respectable, I began to wonder what sins I had committed. I must be very wicked, I thought. I began to engage in the most uncomfortable introspection.

No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.

The camera is as subjective as we are.

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

Every increase in knowledge requires an increase in wisdom

I feel as if one would only discover on one's death bed what one ought to have lived for

The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.

The saviors of the world, society's last hope.

One of the troubles about vanity is that it grows with what it feeds on. The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about.

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

Our beliefs are, however, often contrary to fact.

I cannot escape from the conclusion that the great ages of progress have depended upon a small number of individuals of transcendent ability.

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.

We need a science to save us from science.

It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.

Berkeley retains the merit of having shown that the existence of matter is capable of being denied without absurdity.

[Kant] was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed imjplicitly in the maximx that he had imbibed at his mother's knee.

We shall say that we have acquaintance with anything of which we are directly aware, without the intermediary of any process of inference of any knowledge of truths.

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

Morally, a philosopher who uses his professional competence for anything except a disinterested search for truth is guilty of a kind of treachery.

Aristotle and Plato considered Greeks so innately superior to barbarians that slavery is justified so long as the master is Greek and the slave barbarian.

When we perceive any object of a familiar kind, much of what appears subjectively to be immediately given is really derived from past experience.

Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

The purpose of education is to teach a defense against eloquence.

Humanistic ethics is based on the principle that only humans themselves can determine the criterion for virtue and not an authority transcending us.

In a democracy it is necessary that people should learn to endure having their sentiments outraged.

One of the most painful circumstances of recent advances in science is that each one makes us know less than we thought we did

It is obviously possible that what we call waking life may only be an unusual and persistent nightmare.

Physics, owing to the simplicity of its subject matter, has reached a higher state of development than any other science.

To create a healthy philosophy you should renounce metaphysics but be a good mathematician.

To a modern mind, it is difficult to feel enthusiastic about a virtuous life if nothing is going to be achieved by it.

Emphatic and reiterated assertion, especially during childhood, produces in most people a belief so firm as to have a hold even over the unconscious.

For over two thousand years it has been the custom among earnest moralists to decry happiness as something degraded and unworthy