Bertrand Russell Quotes - Page 19

• The satisfaction to be derived from success in a great constructive enterprise is one of the most massive that life has to offer.

  Bertrand Russell

  Happiness, Satisfaction, Enterprise

  Bertrand Russell (2012). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.151, Routledge

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• Most men do not feel in themselves the competence required for leading their group to victory, and therefore seek out a captain who appears to possess the courage and sagacity necessary for the achievement of supremacy. Even in religion this impulse appears. Nietzsche accused Christianity of inculcating a slave-morality, but ultimate triumph was always the goal. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

  Bertrand Russell

  Blessed, Men, Goal

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Power: A New Social Analysis”, p.29, Routledge

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• The free intellect is the chief engine of human progress.

  Bertrand Russell

  Progress, Chiefs, Intellect

  Bertrand Russell, Richard A. Rempel, Beryl Haslam (2000). “Uncertain Paths to Freedom: Russia and China, 1919-22”, p.197, Psychology Press

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• The whole conception of a God is a conception derived from the ancient oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Wish, Age

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.34, Routledge

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• Scientific method, although in its more refined forms it may seem complicated, is in essence remarkably simply. It consists in observing such facts as will enable the observer to discover general laws governing facts of the kind in question. The two stages, first of observation, and second of inference to a law, are both essential, and each is susceptible of almost indefinite refinement. (1931)

  Bertrand Russell

  Science, Law, Essence

  Bertrand Russell (2017). “The Scientific Outlook”, p.19, Routledge

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• Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mistake, People, Dogma

  Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.547, Psychology Press

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• Some people would rather die than think.

  Bertrand Russell

  Death, Education, Thinking

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• Politics is largely governed by sententious platitudes which are devoid of truth

  Bertrand Russell

  Platitudes

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.66, Routledge

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• Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the georgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

  Bertrand Russell

  Art, Truth, Science

  Philosophical Essays (1910) no. 4

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• To abandon the struggle for private happiness, to expel all eagerness of temporary desire, to burn with passion for eternal things-this is emancipation, and this is the free man's worship... United with his fellow men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love.

  Bertrand Russell

  Spiritual, Struggle, Passion

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.36, 谷月社

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• Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics.

  Bertrand Russell

  Belief, Stoic, Skeptic

  Bertrand Russell (1971). “Bertrand Russell's best: silhouettes in satire”, Allen & Unwin

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• I FIND IT SO DIFFICULT NOT TO HATE, WHEN I DO NOT HATE I FEEL WE FEW ARE SO LONELY IN THE WORLD

  Bertrand Russell

  Lonely, Hate, World

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• The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.

  Bertrand Russell

  People, Religion, Ordinary

  Sceptical Essays

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• I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.

  Bertrand Russell

  Sex, Honesty, Believe

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• There can't be a practical reason for believing something that is not true.

  Bertrand Russell

  Believe, Religion, Reason

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• Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

  Bertrand Russell

  Fake People, Math, Talking

  "Mathematics and Metaphysicians" (1901)

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• A religious creed differs from a scientific theory in claiming to embody eternal and absolutely certain truth, whereas science is always tentative, expecting that modification in its present theories will sooner or later be found necessary, and aware that its method is one which is logically incapable of arriving at a complete and final demonstration.

  Bertrand Russell

  Religious, Adventure, Arriving

  "Religion and Science". Book by Bertrand Russell, Ch. I: Ground of Conflict, 1935.

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• None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.

  Bertrand Russell

  Inspirational, Fear, Coward

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• In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

  Bertrand Russell

  Leadership, Thank You, Thankful

  "Bertrand Russell's Greatest Paradox was His Faith" by Dan Delzell, www.christianpost.com. November 4, 2011.

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• 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”

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• Liberty is the right to do what I like; licence, the right to do what you like.

  Bertrand Russell

  Liberty, License

  "Fact and Fiction".

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• If the Church is not now as bad as the Soviet Government, that is due to the influence of those who attacked the Church

  Bertrand Russell

  Government, Church, Influence

  Bertrand Russell, Andrew G. Bone (2003). “Man's Peril, 1954-55”, p.216, Psychology Press

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• 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

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• It appeared to me that the dignity of which human existence is capable is not attainable by devotion to the mechanism of life , and that unless contemplation of eternal things is preserved, mankind will become no better than well-fed pigs.

  Bertrand Russell

  Pigs, Dignity, Devotion

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Autobiography”, p.149, Routledge

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• Mathematics is, I believe, the chief source of the belief in eternal and exact truth, as well as a sensible intelligible world.

  Bertrand Russell

  Believe, World, Belief

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition”, p.38, Routledge

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