Bertrand Russell Quotes - Page 31

• I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.

  Bertrand Russell

  Believe, Thinking, Supposing That

  Sceptical Essays (1928) "On the Value of Scepticism"

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• The most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition. The experimental habit of mind is a difficult one for most people to maintain; indeed, the science of one generation has already become the tradition of the next

  Bertrand Russell

  People, Mind, Next

  Bertrand Russell (2001). “The Scientific Outlook”, p.115, Psychology Press

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• Protagoras did not know if the gods exist, but he held in any case they ought to be worshiped. Philosophy, according to him, had nothing edifying to teach, and for the survival of morals we must rely upon the thoughtlessness of the majority and their willingness to believe what they had been taught.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Believe, Rely Upon

  Bertrand Russell, Robert Edward Egner (1961). “The basic writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”

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• Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.

  Bertrand Russell

  Awareness, Universal, Conceiving

  Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Bernd Frohmann (1992). “Logical and Philosophical Papers, 1909-13”, p.150, Psychology Press

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• I have been merely oppressed by the weariness and tedium and vanity of things lately: nothing stirs me, nothing seems worth doing or worth having done: the only thing that I strongly feel worth while would be to murder as many people as possible so as to diminish the amount of consciousness in the world. These times have to be lived through: there is nothing to be done with them.

  Bertrand Russell

  Vanity, People, Would Be

  Bertrand Russell (1969). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: 1872-1914”

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• John Locke invented common sense, and only Englishmen have had it ever since!

  Bertrand Russell

  Common Sense, Common, Englishmen

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• In obedience to the feeling of reality, we shall insist that, in the analysis of propositions, nothing "unreal" is to be admitted. But, after all, if there is nothing unreal, how, it may be asked, could we admit anything unreal? The reply is that, in dealing with propositions, we are dealing in the first instance with symbols, and if we attribute significance to groups of symbols which have no significance, we shall fall into the error of admitting unrealities, in the only sense in which this is possible, namely, as objects described.

  Bertrand Russell

  Fall, Reality, Errors

  Bertrand Russell (2007). “Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy”, p.170, Spokesman Books

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• [Regarding] the convention that clergymen are more virtuous than other men. Any average selection of mankind, set apart and told that it excels the rest in virtue, must tend to sink below the average.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Average, Atheism

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel”, p.117, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Giving, Wish

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays”, p.97, Booklassic

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• 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.

  Bertrand Russell

  Advice, Solitude, World

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.60, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Analytic It is clear that the definition of "logic" or "mathematics" must be sought by trying to give a new definition of the old notion of "analytic" propositions.

  Bertrand Russell

  Giving, Trying, Definitions

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.155, Routledge

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• Hatred of enemies is easier and more intense than love of friends. But from men who are more anxious to injure opponents than to benefit the world at large no great good is to be expected.

  Bertrand Russell

  Love, Hate, Men

  Bertrand Russell (1972). “Bolshevism: practice and theory”, Ayer Co Pub

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• The true function of logic ... as applied to matters of experience ... is analytic rather than constructive; taken a priori, it shows the possibility of hitherto unsuspected alternatives more often than the impossibility of alternatives which seemed prima facie possible. Thus, while it liberates imagination as to what the world may be, it refuses to legislate as to what the world is

  Bertrand Russell

  Taken, Imagination, Alternatives

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Our Knowledge of the External World”, p.6, Routledge

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• I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.

  Bertrand Russell

  Math, Science, Return

  Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The private years, 1884-1914”, Allen Lane

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• The mind is a strange machine which can combine the materials offered to it in the most astonishing ways.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mind, Machines, Way

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.93, Lulu Press, Inc

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• I say people who feel they must have a faith or religion in order to face life are showing a kind of cowardice, which in any other sphere would be considered contemptible. But when it is in the religious sphere it is thought admirable, and I cannot admire cowardice whatever sphere it is in.

  Bertrand Russell

  Religious, Order, People

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.37, Routledge

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• Very many people spend money in ways quite different from those that their natural tastes would enjoin, merely because the respect of their neighbors depends upon their possession of a good car and their ability to give good dinners. As a matter of fact, any man who can obviously afford a car but genuinely prefers travels or a good library will in the end be much more respected than if he behaved exactly like everyone else.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, People, Giving

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• I have found, for example, that if I have to write upon sum rather difficult topic, the best plan is to think about it with very great intensity-the greatest intensity of which I am capable-for a few hours or days, and at the end of that time give orders, so to speak (to my subconscious mind) that the work is to proceed underground. After some months I return consciously to the topic and find that the work has been done.

  Bertrand Russell

  Writing, Thinking, Order

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• It is only through imagination that men become aware of what the world might be; without it, ‘progress’ would become mechanical and trivial.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Imagination, Progress

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “On Education”, p.23, Routledge

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• Very few men can be genuinely happy in a life involving continual self-assertion against the skepticism of the mass of mankind, unless they can shut themselves up in a coterie and forget the cold outer world. The man of science has no need of a coterie, since he is thought well of by everybody except his colleagues. The artist, on the contrary, is in the painful situation of having to choose between being despised and being despicable.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Artist, Self

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.55, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it.

  Bertrand Russell

  Fear, Conquer The World, Terror

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.23, Simon and Schuster

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• Civilized life, if it is to be stable, must provide a harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting. In Australia, where people are few, and rabbits are many, I watched the whole populace satisfying the primitive impulse in the primitive manner by the skilful slaughter of many thousands of rabbits.

  Bertrand Russell

  Hunting, Australia, People

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.5, Routledge

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• What is best in mathematics deserves not merely to be learnt as a task, but to assimilated as a part of daily thought, and brought again and again before the mind with ever-renewed encouragement.

  Bertrand Russell

  Encouragement, Learning, Science

  Bertrand Russell (1985). “Contemplation and Action, 1902-14”, p.86, Psychology Press

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• 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.

  Bertrand Russell

  Motivational, Courage, Atheist

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.23, Simon and Schuster

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• Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.

  Bertrand Russell

  Life, Death, Fall

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.115, Simon and Schuster

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