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
Bertrand Russell quotes about
political motive
Almost all education has a political motive.
pursuit mankind delusion
It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.
hysteria creating feelings
Everybody can do something toward creating in his own environment kindly feelings rather than anger, reasonableness rather than hysteria, happiness rather than misery.
philosophy expression class
We may say, in a broad way, that Greek philosophy down to Aristotle expresses the mentality appropriate to the City State; that Stoicism is appropriate to a cosmopolitan despotism; that stochastic philosophy is an intellectual expression of the Church as an organization; that philosophy since Descartes, or at any rate since Locke, tends to embody the prejudices of the commercial middle class; and that Marxism and Fascism are the philosophies appropriate to the modern industrial state.
matter merit existence
Berkeley retains the merit of having shown that the existence of matter is capable of being denied without absurdity.
atheism speak precaution
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.
atheism unhappy balance
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.
suicide land america
America remained a land of promise for lovers of freedom. Even Byron, at a moment when he was disgusted with Napoleon for not committing suicide, wrote an eloquent stanza in praise of Washington.
responsibility government political
The institution of representative government to us seems an essential part of democracy, but the ancients never thought of it. Its immense merit was that it enabled a large constituency to exert indirect power, and thus made possible the distribution of political responsibility throughout the great states of modern times.
two littles youth
To the young I should offer two maxims: Don't accept superficial solutions of difficult problems. It is better to do a little good than much harm. I should not offer anything more specific; every young person should decide on his or her own credo.
daughter men poetry
In his youth, Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry and had a natural daughter. At this period, he was a bad man. Then he became good, abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles and wrote bad poetry.
simple perfect language
In a logically perfect language, there will be one word and no more for every simple object, and everything that is not simple will be expressed by a combination of words, by a combination derived, of course, from the words for the simple things that enter in, one word for each simple component.
language process inference
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.
knowledge inference knows
Whatever we know without inference is mental.