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
atheist hands parent
Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion go hand in hand.
atheist believe philosophical
It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true
atheist religion atheism
I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.
motivational courage atheist
A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.
atheist men thinking
As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.
christian atheist lying
I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.
christian atheist practice
An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, an Agnostic may hold that the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not worth considering in practice. In that case, he is not far removed from atheism.
atheist people change-is-good
Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.
atheist race views
Religion is based ... mainly upon fear ... fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.
atheist shapes way
That the world is in a bad shape is undeniable, but there is not the faintest reason in history to suppose that Christianity offers a way out.
christian atheist thinking
Modern American politicians have the same cowardice about denying an equally bloodthirsty even sillier god, Jehovah. None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of Homer really exist... I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line.
achievement inevitably leave man prey success taught unless
Unless a man has been taught what to do with success after getting it, the achievement of it must inevitably leave him a prey to boredom.
emptiness grand imagine introvert malady manifold prone solitude spectacle spread turns
We are all prone to the malady of the introvert who, with the manifold spectacle of the world spread out before him, turns away and gazes only upon the emptiness within. But let us not imagine there is anything grand about the introvert's unhappiness.
children school army
The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.