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
Organized people are just too lazy to look for things
All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.
Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.
I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics.
People are zealous for a cause when they are not quite positive that it is true.
It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.
The first dogma which I came to disbelieve was that of free will. It seemed to me that all notions of matter were determined by the laws of dynamics and could not therefore be influenced by human wills.
The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.
There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them and feel justified in lying to them.
Altogether it will be found that a quiet life is characteristic of great men, and that their pleasures have not been of the sort that would look exciting to the outward eye.