Bertrand Russell Quotes - Page 30

• I cannot favour laws such as that of Idaho, which allows sterilization of 'mental defectives, epileptics, habitual criminals, moral degenerates, and sex perverts.' The last two categories here are very vague . . . The law of Idaho would have justified the sterilization of Socrates, Plato, Julius Caesar, and St. Paul.

  Bertrand Russell

  Sex, Plato, Law

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.102, Routledge

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• There is in Aristotle an almost complete absence of what may be called benevolence or philanthropy. The sufferings of mankind . . . there is no evidence that they cause him unhappiness except when the sufferers happen to be his friends.

  Bertrand Russell

  Suffering, May, Causes

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.177, Routledge

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• Philosophy is an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Thinking, Ingenious

  Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Peter Köllner (1996). “A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42”, p.336, Psychology Press

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• The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.

  Bertrand Russell

  Power, Thinking, Technique

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “Human Society in Ethics and Politics”, p.164, Routledge

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• Protagoras did not know if the gods exist, but he held in any case they ought to be worshiped. Philosophy, according to him, had nothing edifying to teach, and for the survival of morals we must rely upon the thoughtlessness of the majority and their willingness to believe what they had been taught.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Believe, Rely Upon

  Bertrand Russell, Robert Edward Egner (1961). “The basic writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”

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• Answering questions is a major part of sex education. Two rules cover the ground. First, always give a truthful answer to a question; secondly, regard sex knowledge as exactly like any other knowledge.

  Bertrand Russell

  Sex, Two, Giving

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “On Education”, p.140, Routledge

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• I went to Salt Lake City and the Mormons tried to convert me, but when I found they forbade tea and tobacco I thought it was no religion for me.

  Bertrand Russell

  Lakes, Cities, Tea

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Autobiography”, p.407, Routledge

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• It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians.

  Bertrand Russell

  Christian, Teaching, Men

  Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Peter Köllner (1996). “A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42”, p.221, Psychology Press

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• The most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition. The experimental habit of mind is a difficult one for most people to maintain; indeed, the science of one generation has already become the tradition of the next

  Bertrand Russell

  People, Mind, Next

  Bertrand Russell (2001). “The Scientific Outlook”, p.115, Psychology Press

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• But as the work proceeded I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was not more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.

  Bertrand Russell

  Fall, Years, Elephants

  Bertrand Russell (1998). “Autobiography”, p.725, Psychology Press

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• I have been merely oppressed by the weariness and tedium and vanity of things lately: nothing stirs me, nothing seems worth doing or worth having done: the only thing that I strongly feel worth while would be to murder as many people as possible so as to diminish the amount of consciousness in the world. These times have to be lived through: there is nothing to be done with them.

  Bertrand Russell

  Vanity, People, Would Be

  Bertrand Russell (1969). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: 1872-1914”

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• John Locke invented common sense, and only Englishmen have had it ever since!

  Bertrand Russell

  Common Sense, Common, Englishmen

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• In obedience to the feeling of reality, we shall insist that, in the analysis of propositions, nothing "unreal" is to be admitted. But, after all, if there is nothing unreal, how, it may be asked, could we admit anything unreal? The reply is that, in dealing with propositions, we are dealing in the first instance with symbols, and if we attribute significance to groups of symbols which have no significance, we shall fall into the error of admitting unrealities, in the only sense in which this is possible, namely, as objects described.

  Bertrand Russell

  Fall, Reality, Errors

  Bertrand Russell (2007). “Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy”, p.170, Spokesman Books

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• [Regarding] the convention that clergymen are more virtuous than other men. Any average selection of mankind, set apart and told that it excels the rest in virtue, must tend to sink below the average.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Average, Atheism

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel”, p.117, Lulu Press, Inc

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• I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.

  Bertrand Russell

  Believe, Thinking, Supposing That

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

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• Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Giving, Wish

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays”, p.97, Booklassic

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• We are all prone to the malady of the introvert who with the manifold spectacle of the world spread out before him, turns away and gazes only upon the emptiness within.

  Bertrand Russell

  Advice, Solitude, World

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.60, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.

  Bertrand Russell

  Awareness, Universal, Conceiving

  Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Bernd Frohmann (1992). “Logical and Philosophical Papers, 1909-13”, p.150, Psychology Press

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• Analytic It is clear that the definition of "logic" or "mathematics" must be sought by trying to give a new definition of the old notion of "analytic" propositions.

  Bertrand Russell

  Giving, Trying, Definitions

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.155, Routledge

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• Envy is the basis of democracy.

  Bertrand Russell

  Envy, Democracy, Bases

  Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 6

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• I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.

  Bertrand Russell

  Math, Science, Return

  Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The private years, 1884-1914”, Allen Lane

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• Hatred of enemies is easier and more intense than love of friends. But from men who are more anxious to injure opponents than to benefit the world at large no great good is to be expected.

  Bertrand Russell

  Love, Hate, Men

  Bertrand Russell (1972). “Bolshevism: practice and theory”, Ayer Co Pub

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• 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

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• The mind is a strange machine which can combine the materials offered to it in the most astonishing ways.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mind, Machines, Way

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.93, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Very few men can be genuinely happy in a life involving continual self-assertion against the skepticism of the mass of mankind, unless they can shut themselves up in a coterie and forget the cold outer world. The man of science has no need of a coterie, since he is thought well of by everybody except his colleagues. The artist, on the contrary, is in the painful situation of having to choose between being despised and being despicable.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Artist, Self

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.55, W. W. Norton & Company

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