Bertrand Russell Quotes - Page 19

• Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the georgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

  Bertrand Russell

  Art, Truth, Science

  Philosophical Essays (1910) no. 4

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• To a mind of sufficient intellectual power, the whole of mathematics would appear trivial, as trivial as the statement that a four-footed animal is an animal.

  Bertrand Russell

  Animal, Intellectual, Mind

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.230, Routledge

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• There are certain things that our age needs. It needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.

  Bertrand Russell

  Hope, Creativity, Age

  Bertrand Russell (1998). “Autobiography”, p.520, Psychology Press

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• I am firm; YOU are obstinate; HE is a pig-headed fool.

  Bertrand Russell

  Stupid, Pigs, Fool

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• It's coexistence or no existence.

  Bertrand Russell

  Diversity, Existence, Coexistence

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• A European who goes to New York and Chicago sees the future... when he goes to Asia he sees the past.

  Bertrand Russell

  New York, Past, Chicago

  Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”, p.555, Psychology Press

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• Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.

  Bertrand Russell

  Change, Happiness, Happy

  Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.395, Psychology Press

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• A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

  Bertrand Russell

  Time, Truth, Thinking

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Mysticism and Logic”, p.35, Bertrand Russell

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• All the labor of all the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction. So now, my friends, if that is true, and it is true, what is the point?

  Bertrand Russell

  Inspiration, Age, Genius

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• Everybody can do something toward creating in his own environment kindly feelings rather than anger, reasonableness rather than hysteria, happiness rather than misery.

  Bertrand Russell

  Hysteria, Creating, Feelings

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• The man who suffers from a sense of sin is suffering from a particular kind of self-love. In all this vast universe the thing that appears to him of most importance is that he himself should be virtuous. It is a grave defect in certain forms of traditional religion that they have encouraged this particular kind of self-absorption.

  Bertrand Russell

  Love, Men, Self

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.142, Lulu Press, Inc

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• There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.

  Bertrand Russell

  Knowledge And Power, Government, Majority

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• A man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if indeed such a man exists.

  Bertrand Russell

  Writing, Men, History

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.465, Routledge

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• The road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.

  Bertrand Russell

  Lying, Hard Work, Prosperity

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “In Praise of Idleness”, p.5, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.

  Bertrand Russell

  Summer, Moving, Men

  Sceptical Essays (1928) "Dreams and Facts"

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• Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a long period, as, for example, ancient Egypt persisted, or does it necessarily contain within itself forces which must bring either decay or explosion?

  Bertrand Russell

  Science, Egypt, Long

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “The Impact of Science on Society”, p.87, Routledge

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• The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts.

  Bertrand Russell

  Time, Lying, Thinking

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.16, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

  Bertrand Russell

  Love, Life, Wedding

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Marriage and Morals”, p.79, Routledge

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• Most men do not feel in themselves the competence required for leading their group to victory, and therefore seek out a captain who appears to possess the courage and sagacity necessary for the achievement of supremacy. Even in religion this impulse appears. Nietzsche accused Christianity of inculcating a slave-morality, but ultimate triumph was always the goal. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

  Bertrand Russell

  Blessed, Men, Goal

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Power: A New Social Analysis”, p.29, Routledge

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• The more you complain the longer God lets you live

  Bertrand Russell

  Complaining, Serious, Funny Bumper Sticker

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• I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

  Bertrand Russell

  Lying, Knowledge, Science

  Bertrand Russell (1997). “Religion and Science”, p.243, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Memory demands an image.

  Bertrand Russell

  Memories, Demand

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• The satisfaction to be derived from success in a great constructive enterprise is one of the most massive that life has to offer.

  Bertrand Russell

  Happiness, Satisfaction, Enterprise

  Bertrand Russell (2012). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.151, Routledge

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• Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

  Bertrand Russell

  Fake People, Math, Talking

  "Mathematics and Metaphysicians" (1901)

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• 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. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilisation. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.

  Bertrand Russell

  Race, Views, Two

  Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Peter Köllner (1996). “A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42”, p.214, Psychology Press

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