Bertrand Russell Quotes - Page 21

• Writing can be either readable or precise, but not at the same time.

  Bertrand Russell

  Writing, Precise

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• Mathematics is only the art of saying the same thing in different words.

  Bertrand Russell

  Art, Different, Mathematics

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.727, Routledge

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• I often long to . . . give up my life to love of my neighbour. This is really a temptation.

  Bertrand Russell

  Giving Up, Long, Temptation

  Bertrand Russell, Nicholas Griffin (2002). “The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Private Years, 1884-1914”, p.383, Psychology Press

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• There seems scarcely any limit to what could be done in the way of producing a good world, if only men would use science wisely.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Use, Done

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “What I Believe”, p.53, Routledge

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• I've always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel.

  Bertrand Russell

  Good Morning, People, Looks

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• Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.

  Bertrand Russell

  Thinking, Atheism, Science And Religion

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

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• The painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the color which common sense says they 'really' have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear.

  Bertrand Russell

  Thinking, Color, Common Sense

  Bertrand Russell (1959). “The problems of philosophy”

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• 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

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• One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.

  Bertrand Russell

  Truth, Evil, Growth

  Bertrand Russell, Richard A. Rempel, Beryl Haslam (2000). “Uncertain Paths to Freedom: Russia and China, 1919-22”, p.360, Psychology Press

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• A habit of finding pleasure in thought rather than action is a safeguard against unwisdom and excessive love of power, a means of preserving serenity in misfortune and peace of mind among worries. A life confined to what is personal is likely, sooner or later, to become unbearably painful; it is only by windows into a larger and less fretful cosmos that the more tragic parts of life become endurable.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mean, Worry, Serenity

  Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Peter Köllner (1996). “A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42”, p.310, Psychology Press

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• If two hitherto rival football teams, under the influence of brotherly love, decided to co-operate in placing the football first beyond one goal and then beyond the other, no one's happiness would be increased

  Bertrand Russell

  Football, Team, Two

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.77, Routledge

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• The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interests of the desire to know-it involves suppression of hopes and fears, loves and hates, and the whole subjective emotional life, until we become subdued to the material, able to see it frankly, without preconceptions, without bias, without any wish except to see it as it is, and without any belief that what it is must be determined by some relation, positive or negative, to what we should like it to be, or to what we can easily imagine it to be.

  Bertrand Russell

  Attitude, Hate, Emotional

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “Mysticism and Logic”, p.34, Courier Corporation

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• All definite knowledge - so I should contend - belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack by both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Knowledge, Men

  Bertrand Russell (2008). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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• Love cannot exists as a duty; to tell a child that it ought to love its parents and its brother and sisters is utterly useless, if not worse.

  Bertrand Russell

  Love, Brother, Children

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “On Education”, p.124, Routledge

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• In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces; but in thought, in aspiration, we are free, free from our fellowmen, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the tyranny of death.

  Bertrand Russell

  Desire, Body, Action

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Why I Am Not a Christian”, p.35, Lulu Press, Inc

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• At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love. I had not imagined there was anything so delicious in the world. From that moment until I was thirty-eight, mathematics was my chief interest and my chief source of happiness.

  Bertrand Russell

  Life, Brother, First Love

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Autobiography”, p.25, Routledge

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• Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.

  Bertrand Russell

  Clever, Stupid, Men

  "New Hopes for a Changing World". Part III: Man and Himself, Ch. 16: Ideas Which Have Become Obsolete, p. 158. Book by Bertrand Russell, 1951.

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• There is exactly the same degree of possibility and likelihood of the existence of the Christian God as there is of the existence of the Homeric god. I cannot prove that either the Christian god or the Homeric gods do not exist, but I do not think that their existence is an alternative that is sufficiently probable to be worth serious consideration.

  Bertrand Russell

  Christian, Thinking, Religion

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Why I Am Not a Christian”, p.22, Lulu Press, Inc

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• I used often to go to America during Prohibition, and there was far more drunkenness there then than before; the prohibition of pornography has much the same effect.

  Bertrand Russell

  America, Prohibition, Used

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

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• To the primitive mind, everything is either friendly or hostile; but experience has shown that friendliness and hostility are not the conceptions by which the world is to be understood.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mind, Friendly, World

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Mysticism and Logic”, p.49, Bertrand Russell

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• Politics is concerned with herds rather than with individuals, and the passions which are important in politics are, therefore, those in which the various members of a given herd can feel alike.

  Bertrand Russell

  Passion, Important, Individual

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “Human Society in Ethics and Politics”, p.172, Routledge

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• Speaking psycho-analytically, it may be laid down that any "great ideal" which people mention with awe is really an excuse for inflicting pain on their enemies. Good wine needs no bush, and good morals need no bated breath.

  Bertrand Russell

  Pain, Wine, People

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.240, Routledge

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• Freedom in education has many aspects. There is first of all freedom to learn or not to learn. Then there is freedom as to what to learn. And in later education there is freedom of opinion.

  Bertrand Russell

  Firsts, Opinion, Aspect

  Bertrand Russell (1971). “Ladislas Reymont: Romain Rolland ; Bertrand Russell”

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• If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument... The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination.

  Bertrand Russell

  Ideas, Imagination, Religion

  "Why I Am Not a Christian". "The First-cause Argument". Book by Bertrand Russell, 1927.

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• Broadly speaking, we are in the middle of a race between human skill as a means and human folly as an end.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mean, Race, Skills

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “The Impact of Science on Society”, p.88, Routledge

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