Quotes by Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

… mathematical knowledge … is, in fact, merely verbal knowledge. “3” means “2+1”, and “4” means “3+1”. Hence it follows (though the proof is long) that “4” means the same as “2+2”. Thus mathematical knowledge ceases to be mysterious.

Long

Mean

Numbers

… the word “theory” … was originally an Orphic word, which Cornford interprets as “passionate sympathetic contemplation” … For Pythagoras, the “passionate sympathetic contemplation” was intellectual, and issued in mathematical knowledge … To those who have reluctantly learnt a little mathematics in school this may seem strange; but to those who have experienced the intoxicating delight of sudden understanding that mathematics gives, from time to time, to those who love it, the Pythagorean view will seem completely natural.

Giving

School

Views

…I am afraid that education is conceived more in terms of indoctrination by most school officials than in terms of enlightenment. My own belief is that education must be subversive if it is to be meaningful. By this I mean that it must challenge all the things we take for granted, examine all accepted assumptions, tamper with every sacred cow, and instill a desire to question and doubt. Without this the mere instruction to memorise data is empty. The attempt to enforce conventional mediocrity on the young is criminal.

Data

Meaningful

School

…the nonexistence of God makes more difference to some of us than to others. To me, it means that there is no absolute morality, that moralities are sets of social conventions devised by humans to satisfy their needs.

Differences

Mean

Needs

(on A History of Western Philosophy) I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history – if, indeed, such man exists.

Men

Philosophy

Writing

[Industrialism’s soon diminishing] capacity to supply human needs could be prevented if men exercised any restraint or foresight in their present frenzied exploitation.

Capacity

Men

Needs

[Man] … his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labour of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.

Inspiration

Men

Science

[The church] is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. “What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy.

People

Suffering

Thinking

[There are m]oral precepts that we consider really important, such as ‘don’t pick your nose’ or ‘don’t eat peas with a knife’. There may, for ought I know, be admirable reasons for eating peas with a knife, but . . . early persuasion has made me completely incapable of appreciating them.

Appreciate

Important

Knives

[There has been] every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.

Names

People

Religion

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4th Of July

Absolutes

Accepting

Achieve

Achievement

Acquiescence

Action

Addiction

Adequate

Adults

Adventure

Affection

Age

Agriculture

Alcohol

Alive

America

Ancient

Angel

Anger

Animal

Anniversary

Answers

Anxiety

Appreciate

Arbitration

Architecture

Argument

Aristocracy

Armor

Art

Artist

Asking Questions

Aspect

Atheism

Atheist

Attitude

Attributes

Authority

Baby

Badass

Bags

Bases

Beautiful

Bed

Being True

Being Yourself

Belief

Believe

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Quotes by Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

… mathematical knowledge … is, in fact, merely verbal knowledge. “3” means “2+1”, and “4” means “3+1”. Hence it follows (though the proof is long) that “4” means the same as “2+2”. Thus mathematical knowledge ceases to be mysterious.

…the nonexistence of God makes more difference to some of us than to others. To me, it means that there is no absolute morality, that moralities are sets of social conventions devised by humans to satisfy their needs.

(on A History of Western Philosophy) I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history – if, indeed, such man exists.

[Industrialism’s soon diminishing] capacity to supply human needs could be prevented if men exercised any restraint or foresight in their present frenzied exploitation.

[There are m]oral precepts that we consider really important, such as ‘don’t pick your nose’ or ‘don’t eat peas with a knife’. There may, for ought I know, be admirable reasons for eating peas with a knife, but . . . early persuasion has made me completely incapable of appreciating them.

[There has been] every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.

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