Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
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...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth18 May 1872
There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.
Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people's.
Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.
The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.
To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.
Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.
Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.
What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.
Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.
Any pleasure that does no harm to other people is to be valued.
The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.