Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRSwas a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist and Nobel laureate. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had "never been any of these things, in any profound sense". He was born in Monmouthshire into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth18 May 1872
I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.
It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go.
Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence
Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.
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.
There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.