Bertrand Russell Quotes - Page 20

• 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

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• Orthodoxy is the death of intelligence.

  Bertrand Russell

  Orthodoxy

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• Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

  Bertrand Russell

  Elderly, Umpires, Ignorant

  Look Magazine, February 23, 1954.

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• Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life.

  Bertrand Russell

  Lying, Philosophy, Asking Questions

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “The Problems of Philosophy”, p.18, Bertrand Russell

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• That which exists through itself is called The Eternal. The Eternal has neither name nor shape. It is the one essence, the one primal spirit. Essence and life cannot be seen. They are contained in the light of heaven. The light of heaven cannot be seen. It is contained in the two eyes.

  Bertrand Russell

  Eye, Light, Essence

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• The axiomatic method has many advantages over honest work.

  Bertrand Russell

  Honest, Advantage, Method

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• If throughout your life you abstain from murder, theft, fornication, perjury, blasphemy, and disrespect toward your parents, church, and your king, you are conventionally held to deserve moral admiration even if you have never done a single kind, generous or useful action. This very inadequate notion of virtue is an outcome of taboo morality, and has done untold harm.

  Bertrand Russell

  Kings, Parent, Disrespect

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Human Society in Ethics and Politics”, p.27, Routledge

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• To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

  Bertrand Russell

  Birthday, Educational, Philosophy

  Bertrand Russell (2008). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

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• The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Men, Instinct

  Bertrand Russell (2008). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.45, Simon and Schuster

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• Science, by itself cannot, supply us with an ethic.

  Bertrand Russell

  Ethics, Morality

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• This illustrates an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences to which it gives rise.

  Bertrand Russell

  Giving, Interesting, Important

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.674, Routledge

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• Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.

  Bertrand Russell

  Privilege, Revolutionary, Habit

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Why Men Fight”, p.107, Routledge

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• When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behavior is the result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth, and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination... When a motorcar fails to start, we do not attribute its annoying behavior to sin, we do not say, you are a wicked motorcar, and you shall not have any more gasoline until you go.

  Bertrand Russell

  Thinking, Men, Long

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• All movements go too far.

  Bertrand Russell

  Change, Movement, Belief

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.71, Routledge

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• A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Desire, Proportion

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.39, Psychology Press

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• Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.

  Bertrand Russell

  Freedom, Fear, Desire

  Bertrand Russell (1996). “The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell: A Fresh Look at Empiricism 1927-42”

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• Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man. Every careful measurement in science is always given with the probable error ... every observer admits that he is likely wrong, and knows about how much wrong he is likely to be.

  Bertrand Russell

  Truth, Science, Men

  "The Scientific Outlook".

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• There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago.

  Bertrand Russell

  Past, Atheism, Events

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “The Analysis of Mind”, p.223, Bertrand Russell

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• It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.

  Bertrand Russell

  Believe, Men, Intuition

  Bertrand Russell (2008). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.527, Simon and Schuster

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• We may often do as we please - but we cannot please as we please.

  Bertrand Russell

  May, Please

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• What Galileo and Newton were to the seventeenth century, Darwin was to the nineteenth.

  Bertrand Russell

  Newton, Century

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.273, Routledge

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• The power of thought, the vast regions it can master.

  Bertrand Russell

  Masters, Power Of Thought, Regions

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• In attempting to understand the elements out of which mental phenomena are compounded, it is of the greatest importance to remember that from the protozoa to man there is nowhere a very wide gap either in structure or in behaviour. From this fact it is a highly probable inference that there is also nowhere a very wide mental gap.

  Bertrand Russell

  Science, Men, Mind

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “The Analysis of Mind”, p.54, Bertrand Russell

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• It can be shown that a mathematical web of some kind can be woven about any universe containing several objects. The fact that our universe lends itself to mathematical treatment is not a fact of any great philosophical significance.

  Bertrand Russell

  Kindness, Philosophical, Math

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• As soon as it is held that any belief, no matter what, is important for some other reason than that it is true, a whole host of evils is ready to spring up.

  Bertrand Russell

  Spring, Evil, Important

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.197, Simon and Schuster

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