Bertrand Russell Quotes About Evolution

• Change is scientific; progress is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.

  Bertrand Russell

  Change, Science, History

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

• One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

  Bertrand Russell

  Stupid, Ignorance, Imagination

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.676, Routledge

• After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution progressed to the point at which it generated Neros, Genghis Khans, and Hitlers. This, however, is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.

  Bertrand Russell

  Butterfly, Age, Nero

  Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”, p.459, Psychology Press

• Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance.

  Bertrand Russell

  Wisdom, Science, Giving

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.66, 谷月社

• An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalization would be just as well founded as the generalization which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet.

  Bertrand Russell

  Science, History, Perfection

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.66, 谷月社

• The evolution of our spirit is blazed on the dark background of eternity by our individual wakes. Every person can, if he/she wishes, leave a more or less brilliant wake behind them.

  Bertrand Russell

  Dark, Wish, Spirit

• Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others.

  Bertrand Russell

  Religious, Stupid, Teaching

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “Education and the Social Order”, p.73, Routledge

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