Bertrand Russell Quotes - Page 35

• Children, after being limbs of Satan in traditional theology and mystically illuminated angels in the minds of educational reformers, have reverted to being little devils; not theological demons inspired by the evil one, but scientific Freudian abominations inspired by the unconscious.

  Bertrand Russell

  Children, Educational, Angel

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.60, Routledge

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• This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible and is something which no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate.

  Bertrand Russell

  Ideas, Humanity, Weapons

  Speech in Birmingham, England encouraging civil disobedience in support of nuclear disarmament, April 15, 1961.

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• Our individual life is brief, and perhaps the whole life of mankind will be brief if measured in astronomical scale

  Bertrand Russell

  Individuality, Life Is, Scales

  Bertrand Russell (1944). “Pamphlets: The value of free thought; Ideas that have harmed mankind; Ideas that have helped mankind; The faith of a rationalist”

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• At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.

  Bertrand Russell

  War, Victory, Facts

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays”, p.99, Psychology Press

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• Thee might observe incidentally that if the state paid for child-bearing it might and ought to require a medical certificate that the parents were such as to give a reasonable result of a healthy child -- this would afford a very good inducement to some sort of care for the race, and gradually as public opinion became educated by the law, it might react on the law and make that more stringent, until one got to some state of things in which there would be a little genuine care for the race, instead of the present haphazard higgledy-piggledy ways.

  Bertrand Russell

  Children, Race, Law

  Bertrand Russell, Nicholas Griffin (2002). “The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Private Years, 1884-1914”, p.125, Psychology Press

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• The three main extra-rational activities in modern life are religion, war, and love. all these are extra-rational, but love is not anti-rational, that is to say, a reasonable man may reasonably rejoice in its existence

  Bertrand Russell

  War, Men, Love Is

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Marriage and Morals”, p.74, Routledge

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• For a good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times make it seem almost like a live teacher.

  Bertrand Russell

  Teacher, Math, Subtlety

  "The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell".

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• In human relations one should penetrate to the core of loneliness in each person and speak to that.

  Bertrand Russell

  Loneliness, Speak, Should

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Autobiography”, p.137, Routledge

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• Whether science-and indeed civilization in general-can long survive depends upon psychology, that is to say, it depends upon what human beings desire.

  Bertrand Russell

  Civilization, Long, Psychology

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• In adolescence, I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was restrained by the desire to know more mathematics. Now, on the contrary, I enjoy life; I might almost say that with every year that passes I enjoy it more.

  Bertrand Russell

  Suicide, Years, Enjoy Life

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.7, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Written words differ from spoken words in being material structures. A spoken word is a process in the physical world, having an essential time-order; a written word is a series of pieces of matter, having an essential space-order.

  Bertrand Russell

  Order, Space, Essentials

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.81, Routledge

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• A life devoted to science is therefore a happy life, and its happiness is derived from the very best sources that are open to dwellers on this troubled and passionate planet.

  Bertrand Russell

  Happy Life, Passionate, Source

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “Mysticism and Logic”, p.35, Courier Corporation

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• A physicist looks for causes; that does not necessarily imply that there are causes everywhere. A man may look for gold without assuming that there is gold everywhere; if he finds gold, well and good, if he doesn't he's had bad luck. The same is true when the physicists look for causes.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Luck, Gold

  Bertrand Russell (1986). “Bertrand Russell on God and Religion”

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• When I was 4 years old ... I dreamt that I'd been eaten by a wolf, and to my great surprise I was in the wolf's stomach and not in heaven.

  Bertrand Russell

  Years, Heaven, Surprise

  BBC interview on "Face to Face"; The Listener, Vol. 61 (1959), p. 503, 1959.

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• You, your families, your friends and your countries are to be exterminated by the common decision of a few brutal but powerful men. To please these men, all the private affections, all the public hopes, all that has been achieved in art, and knowledge and thought and all that might be achieved hereafter is to be wiped out forever. Our ruined lifeless planet will continue for countless ages to circle aimlessly round the sun unredeemed by the joys and loves, the occasional wisdom and the power to create beauty which have given value to human life.

  Bertrand Russell

  Country, Art, Powerful

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• No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.

  Bertrand Russell

  Pain, Believe, Men

  Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Peter Köllner (1996). “A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42”, p.217, Psychology Press

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• [One] must look into hell before one has any right to speak of heaven.

  Bertrand Russell

  Heaven, Looks, Speak

  Bertrand Russell, Nicholas Griffin (2001). “The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Public Years, 1914-1970”, p.87, Psychology Press

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• The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.

  Bertrand Russell

  Logic, Architecture, Mathematics

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Mysticism and Logic”, p.95, Bertrand Russell

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• The saviors of the world, society's last hope.

  Bertrand Russell

  World, Lasts, Savior

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• Inferences of Science and Common Sense differ from those of deductive logic and mathematics in a very important respect, namely, when the premises are true and the reasoning correct, the conclusion is only probable.

  Bertrand Russell

  Common Sense, Important, Logic

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• Calculating machines do sums better than even the cleverest people… As arithmetic has grown easier, it has come to be less respected.

  Bertrand Russell

  Respect, People, Machines

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.46, Routledge

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• A million million years gives us some time to prepare for the end . . . let us make the best of it.

  Bertrand Russell

  Years, Giving, Ends

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.35, Routledge

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• How about Pithecanthropus Erectus? Was it really he who ate the apple? Or was it Homo Pekiniensis?

  Bertrand Russell

  Apples

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.30, Routledge

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• Neither acquiescence in skepticism nor acquiescence in dogma is what education should produce.

  Bertrand Russell

  Acquiescence, Dogma, Should

  Bertrand Russell (1993). “The Quotable Bertrand Russell”

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• There are certain things that our age needs, and certain things that it should avoid. It needs compassion and a wish that mankind should be happy; it needs the desire for knowledge and the determination to eschew pleasant myths; it needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.

  Bertrand Russell

  Faith, Determination, Compassion

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

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