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
When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others.
A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.
I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.
Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.
I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.
Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
It seems to me a fundamental dishonesty, and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it's useful and not because you think it's true.
All movements go too far.
Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?
If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
The widespread interest in gossip is inspired, not by a love of knowledge but by malice: no one gossips about other people's secret virtues, but only about their secret vices. Accordingly most gossip is untrue, but care is taken not to verify it. Our neighbour's sins, like the consolations of religion, are so agreeable that we do not stop to scrutinise the evidence closely.
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.
I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out.
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.