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
Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in infering that he is an inexact man. Every careful measurement in science is always given with the probable error ... every observer admits that he is likely wrong, and knows about how much wrong he is likely to be.
Ideas and principles that do harm are as a rule, though not always, cloaks for evil passions.
All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.
There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.
Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.
Every great idea starts out as a blasphemy.
The resistance to a new idea increases by the square of its importance.
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.
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.
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.
Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau.
Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God.
America ... where laws and customs alike are based on the dreams of spinsters.
I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy.