Bertrand Russel
Bertrand Russel
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRSwas a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist and Nobel laureate. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had "never been any of these things, in any profound sense". He was born in Monmouthshire into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom...
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The professional moralist in our day is a man of less than average intelligence
forged honest
There are no better friends than those forged through honest and often heated argument.
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Man is a feeble creature, to whom only submission and worship are besoming. Pride is insolence, and belief in human power is impiety
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It is illegal in England to state in print that a wife can and should derive sexual pleasure from intercourse
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Life is a brief, small, and transitory phenomenon in an obscure corner, not at all the sort of thing that one would make a fuss about if one were not personally concerned
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A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations
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Hatred of enemies is easier and more intense than love of friends. But from men who are more anxious to injure opponents than to benefit the world at large no great good is to be expected.
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If we were all given by magic power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships
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Young men and young women meet each other with much less difficulty than was formerly the case, and every housemaid expects at least once a week as much excitement as would have lasted a Jane Austen heroine throughout a whole novel
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There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action
certainty men
What men want is not knowledge, but certainty.
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What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.
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The professors must not prevent us from realizing that history is fun, and that the most bizarre things really happen
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When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also add that some things are more nearly certain than others