Bertrand Russell Quotes About Giving

• No man treats a motorcar as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behavior to sin; he does not say, 'You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.' He attempts to find out what is wrong and to set it right.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Giving, Car

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.40, Simon and Schuster

• I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social. Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give wisdom at more mundane times. Social: to see in imagination the society that is to be created, where individuals grow freely, and where hate and greed and envy die because there is nothing to nourish them. These things I believe, and the world, for all its horrors, has left me unshaken.

  Bertrand Russell

  Beautiful, Hate, Believe

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.125, Routledge

• When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.

  Bertrand Russell

  Education, Children, Teaching

• 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

• We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophical, Science, Engineering

  Bertrand Russell (1985). “The ABC of relativity”, Signet

• Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.

  Bertrand Russell

  Love, Life, Giving

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Marriage and Morals”, p.80, Routledge

• Men who allow their love of power to give them a distorted view of the world are to be found in every asylum: one man will think he is the Governor of the Bank of England, another will think he is the King, and yet another will think he is God. Highly similar delusions, if expressed by educated men in obscure language, lead to professorships of philosophy; and if expressed by emotional men in eloquent language, lead to dictatorships.

  Bertrand Russell

  Kings, Philosophy, Men

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Power: A New Social Analysis”, p.220, Routledge

• Gradually, ... the aspect of science as knowledge is being thrust into the background by the aspect of science as the power of manipulating nature. It is because science gives us the power of manipulating nature that it has more social importance than art. Science as the pursuit of truth is the equal, but not the superior, of art. Science as a technique, though it may have little intrinsic value, has a practical importance to which art cannot aspire.

  Bertrand Russell

  Art, Knowledge, Science

  Bertrand Russell (2017). “The Scientific Outlook”, p.16, Routledge

• 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

• Scientific societies are as yet in their infancy. It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished.

  Bertrand Russell

  Country, School, Thinking

• Human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those who seem least to demand it.

  Bertrand Russell

  Emotional, Giving, Feelings

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.101, Lulu Press, Inc

• 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

• It seems to me now that mathematics is capable of an artistic excellence as great as that of any music, perhaps greater; not because the pleasure it gives (although very pure) is comparable, either in intensity or in the number of people who feel it, to that of music, but because it gives in absolute perfection that combination, characteristic of great art, of godlike freedom, with the sense of inevitable destiny; because, in fact, it constructs an ideal world where everything is perfect and yet true.

  Bertrand Russell

  Art, Destiny, Numbers

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.162, Routledge

• A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree or certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world suffers.

  Bertrand Russell

  Math, Science, Giving

• These illustrations suggest four general maxims[...]. The first is: remember that your motives are not always as altruistic as they seem to yourself. The second is: don't over-estimate your own merits. The third is: don't expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself. And the fourth is: don't imagine that most people give enough thought to you to have any special desire to persecute you.

  Bertrand Russell

  Illustration, People, Giving

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.68, Lulu Press, Inc

• 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

• The harm that theology has done is not to create cruel impulses, but to give them the sanction of what professes to be lofty ethic, and to confer an apparently sacred character upon practices which have come down from more ignorant and barbarous times.

  Bertrand Russell

  Character, Practice, Giving

  Bertrand Russell (1997). “Religion and Science”, p.106, Oxford University Press, USA

• If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

  Bertrand Russell

  Change, Happiness, Success

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.90, Lulu Press, Inc

• Answering questions is a major part of sex education. Two rules cover the ground. First, always give a truthful answer to a question; secondly, regard sex knowledge as exactly like any other knowledge.

  Bertrand Russell

  Sex, Two, Giving

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “On Education”, p.140, Routledge

• If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

  Bertrand Russell

  Giving, Able, Infinity

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays”, p.77, Booklassic

• ... the word "theory" ... was originally an Orphic word, which Cornford interprets as "passionate sympathetic contemplation" ... For Pythagoras, the "passionate sympathetic contemplation" was intellectual, and issued in mathematical knowledge ... To those who have reluctantly learnt a little mathematics in school this may seem strange; but to those who have experienced the intoxicating delight of sudden understanding that mathematics gives, from time to time, to those who love it, the Pythagorean view will seem completely natural.

  Bertrand Russell

  School, Views, Giving

  Bertrand Russell (2008). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.33, Simon and Schuster

• It appeared that after first contemplating a book on some subject, and after giving serious preliminary attention to it, I needed a period of subconscious incubation which could not be hurried and was if anything impeded by deliberate thinking.... Having, by a time of very intense concentration, planted the problem in my subconsciousness, it would germinate underground until, suddenly, the solution emerged with a blinding clarity, so that it only remained to write down what happened as if in a revelation.

  Bertrand Russell

  Book, Writing, Thinking

• 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

• In regard to the past, where contemplation is not obscured by desire and the need for action, we see, more clearly than in the lives about us, the value for good and evil, of the aims men have pursued and the means they have adopted. It is good, from time to time, to view the present as already past, and to examine what elements it contains that will add to the world's store of permanent possessions, that will live and give life when we and all our generation have perished.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mean, Men, Past

  Bertrand Russell (1985). “Contemplation and Action, 1902-14”, p.80, Psychology Press

• The best practical advice I can give to the present generation is to practice the virtue which the Christians call love.

  Bertrand Russell

  Love, Christian, Kindness

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