Bertrand Russell Quotes About Science

• Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

  Bertrand Russell

  Education, Stupid, School

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition”, p.578, Routledge

• Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.

  Bertrand Russell

  Knowledge, Science, Imagination

  Bertrand Russell (2008). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

• And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence

  Bertrand Russell

  Death, God, Spiritual

  Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.554, Psychology Press

• Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Knowledge, Science

  Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.378, Psychology Press

• Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.

  Bertrand Russell

  Humility, Math, Science

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “An Outline of Philosophy”, p.171, Routledge

• Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.

  Bertrand Russell

  Math, Science, Air

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

• 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”

• The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

  Bertrand Russell

  Inspirational, Success, Confidence

• Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.

  Bertrand Russell

  Life, Badass, Philosophy

  Bertrand Russell (1995). “My Philosophical Development”, p.204, Psychology Press

• A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.

  Bertrand Russell

  Science, Errors, Hallucinations

  Bertrand Russell, Robert Charles Marsh (1988). “Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901-1950”, p.149, Psychology Press

• I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

  Bertrand Russell

  Lying, Knowledge, Science

  Bertrand Russell (1997). “Religion and Science”, p.243, Oxford University Press, USA

• Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

  Bertrand Russell

  Fear, Science, Infancy Is

• The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

  Bertrand Russell

  Learning, Knowledge, Parenting

  Marriage and Morals ch. 5 (1929)

• What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

  Bertrand Russell

  Believe, Science, Opposites

  "Sceptical Essays". Book by Bertrand Russell, Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda, 1928.

• Science seems to be at war with itself.... Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false.

  Bertrand Russell

  War, Science, Technology

• 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

• The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interest of the desire to know.

  Bertrand Russell

  Attitude, Knowledge, Science

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.29, 谷月社

• 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

• A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.

  Bertrand Russell

  Science, Men, Progress

  Bertrand Russell (1985). “Contemplation and Action, 1902-14”, p.171, Psychology Press

• I think it would be just to say the most essential characteristic of mind is memory, using this word in its broadest sense to include every influence of past experience on present reactions.

  Bertrand Russell

  Memories, Science, Past

  Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.285, Psychology Press

• [Man] ... his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labour of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.

  Bertrand Russell

  Inspiration, Science, Men

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays”, p.46, Booklassic

• The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

  Bertrand Russell

  Science, Doubt, Atheism

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.92, Simon and Schuster

• You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.

  Bertrand Russell

  Science, Men, Years

• 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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