Bertrand Russell Quotes
-
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.
-
Ironclads and Maxim guns must be the ultimate arbiters of metaphysical truth.
-
The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.
-
The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
-
Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?
-
I am ashamed of belonging to the species Homo Sapiens...You & I may be thankful to have lived in happier times – you more than I, because you have no children.
-
The tendency of our perceptions is to emphasise increasingly the objective elements in an impression, unless we have some special reason, as artists have, for doing the opposite.
-
The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.
-
If human nature were unchangeable, as ignorant people still suppose it to be, the situation would indeed be hopeless.
-
Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
-
Yes, if you happen to be interested in philosophy and good at it, but not otherwise – but so does bricklaying. Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.
-
Why? Surely they can find other men.
-
Americans need rest, but do not know it. I believe this to be a large part of the explanation of the crime wave in the United States.
-
Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.
-
I may as well say at once that I do not distinguish between inference and deduction. What is called induction appears to me to be either disguised deduction or a mere method of making plausible guesses.
-
Drunkenness is temporary suicide.
-
There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
-
It is likely that America will be more important during the next century or two, but after that it may well be the turn of China.
-
I feel like that intellectual but plain-looking lady who was warmly complimented on her beauty.
-
The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder’s lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.
-
The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.
-
In art the Chinese aim at being exquisite, and in life at being reasonable.
-
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
-
Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.