Bertrand Russell Quotes - Page 46

• You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.

  Bertrand Russell

  Giving, Wicked, Petrol

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.40, Simon and Schuster

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• Great God in Boots! – the ontological argument is sound!

  Bertrand Russell

  Sound, Boots, Argument

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.60, Routledge

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• There are three ways of securing a society that shall be stable as regards population. The first is that of birth control, the second that of infanticide or really destructive wars, and the third that of general misery except for a powerful minority.

  Bertrand Russell

  Powerful, War, Eugenics

  Bertrand Russell (2012). “The Impact of Science on Society”, p.117, Routledge

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• Certain characteristics of the subject are clear. To begin with, we do not in this subject deal with particular things or particular properties: we deal formally with what can be said about any thing or any property. We are prepared to say that one and one are two, but not that Socrates and Plato are two.

  Bertrand Russell

  Plato, Two, Preparation

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.150, Routledge

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• Zeno was concerned with three problems... These are the problem of the infinitesimal, the infinite, and continuity.

  Bertrand Russell

  Education, Three, Statistics

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• I am delighted to know that Principia Mathematica can now be done by machinery. . . I am quite willing to believe that anything in deductive logic can be done by machinery.

  Bertrand Russell

  Believe, Done, Belief

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• Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Pirate, Would Be

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.51, Routledge

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• Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young; the other tenth is physiological, and will occur in one way or another whatever the state of the law may be.

  Bertrand Russell

  Sex, Law, Feelings

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Marriage and Morals”, p.71, Routledge

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• The Axiom of Choice is necessary to select a set from an infinite number of socks, but not an infinite number of shoes.

  Bertrand Russell

  Shoes, Numbers, Choices

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• Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, the chief glory of man.

  Bertrand Russell

  Thinking, Men, Light

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel”, p.96, Lulu Press, Inc

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• The conception of the necessary unit of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of the imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the straitwaistcoated benevolent institution, which idealism palms off as the totality of being.

  Bertrand Russell

  Imagination, Poverty, Logic

  "Our Knowledge of the External World". Book by Bertrand Russell, p. 9, 1914.

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• Love is a little haven of refuge from the world.

  Bertrand Russell

  Love, Romance, Engagement

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.66, W. W. Norton & Company

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• To expect a personality to survive the disintegration of the brain is like expecting a cricket club to survive when all of its members are dead.

  Bertrand Russell

  Personality, Soul, Brain

  Bertrand Russell (1997). “Religion and Science”, p.143, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Modern definitions of truth, such as those as pragmatism and instrumentalism, which are practical rather than contemplative, are inspired by industrialisation as opposed to aristocracy.

  Bertrand Russell

  Political, Aristocracy, Definitions

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• Physics, owing to the simplicity of its subject matter, has reached a higher state of development than any other science.

  Bertrand Russell

  Simplicity, Development, Owing

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Scientific Outlook”, p.42, Routledge

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• Every living thing is a sort of imperialist, seeking to transform as much as possible of its environment into itself . . . When we compare the (present) human population of the globe with . . . that of former times, we see that "chemical imperialism" has been . . . the main end to which human intelligence has been devoted.

  Bertrand Russell

  Life, Intelligence, Population

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• To create a healthy philosophy you should renounce metaphysics but be a good mathematician.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Renounce, Should

  "The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell".

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• The qualities most needed are charity and tolerance, not some form of fanatical faith such as is offered to us by the various rampant isms

  Bertrand Russell

  Tolerance, Quality, Isms

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.160, Routledge

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• There is... in our day, a powerful antidote to nonsense, which hardly existed in earlier times - I mean science. Science cannot be ignored or rejected, because it is bound up with modern technique; it is essential alike to prosperity in peace and to victory in war. That is, perhaps from an intellectual point of view, the most hopeful feature of our age, and the one which makes it most likely that we shall escape complete submersion in some new or old superstition.

  Bertrand Russell

  Powerful, Spring, War

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• If a philosophy is to bring happiness it should be inspired by kindly feelings. Marx pretended that he wanted the happiness of the proletariat; what he really wanted was the unhappiness of the bourgeois.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Inspiration, Feelings

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• He will see himself and life and the world as truly as our human limitations will permit; realizing the brevity and minuteness of human life, he will realize also that in individual minds is concentrated whatever of value the known universe contains. And he will see that the man whose mind mirrors the world becomes in a sense as great as the world. In emancipation from the fears that beset the slave of circumstance he will experience a profound joy, and through all the vicissitudes of his outward life he will remain in the depths of his being a happy man.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Mirrors, Profound

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.133, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Emphatic and reiterated assertion, especially during childhood, produces in most people a belief so firm as to have a hold even over the unconscious.

  Bertrand Russell

  People, Childhood, Belief

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Marriage and Morals”, p.35, Routledge

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• For over two thousand years it has been the custom among earnest moralists to decry happiness as something degraded and unworthy

  Bertrand Russell

  Years, Two, Morality

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.120, Routledge

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• There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead.

  Bertrand Russell

  Doe, May, Littles

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.31, Routledge

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• You may, if you are an old-fashioned schoolmaster, wish to consider yourself full of universal benevolence and at the same time derive great pleasure from caning boys. In order to reconcile these two desires you have to persuade yourself that caning

  Bertrand Russell

  Fashion, Boys, Order

  Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.425, Psychology Press

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