Bertrand Russell Quotes About Rationality

• Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

  Bertrand Russell

  Thinking, Essentials, Doubt And Certainty

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Why I Am Not a Christian”, p.21, Lulu Press, Inc

• It is for this reason that rationality is of supreme importance to the well-being of the human species...even more, in those less fortunate times in which it is despised and rejected as the vain dream of men who lack the virility to kill where they cannot agree.

  Bertrand Russell

  Dream, Men, Reason

• It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true

  Bertrand Russell

  Atheist, Philosophy, Believe

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

• The conception of the necessary unit of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of the imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the straitwaistcoated benevolent institution, which idealism palms off as the totality of being.

  Bertrand Russell

  Imagination, Poverty, Logic

  "Our Knowledge of the External World". Book by Bertrand Russell, p. 9, 1914.

• 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

• We have almost reached the point where praise of rationality is held to mark a man as an old fogey regrettably surviving from a bygone age.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Age, Praise

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.73, Routledge

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