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
In detective stories . . . I alternately identify myself with the murderer and the huntsman-detective, but . . . there are those to which this vicarious outlet is too mild.
In a Balkan country, not so many years ago, a party which had been beaten by a narrow margin in a general election retrieved its fortunes by shooting a sufficient number of the representatives of the other side to give it a majority. . . . Cromwell and Robespierre . . . acted likewise..
If we compare Europe with other continents, it is marked out as [another] persecuting continent.
If the West can claim superiority in anything, it is . . . in science and scientific technique.
If the State does not acquire supremacy over [vast private] enterprises, it becomes their puppet, and they become the real State.
I suggest to young professors that their first work should be written in a jargon only to be understood by the erudite few. With that behind them, they can ever after say what they have to say in a language 'understand of the people.'
I often long to . . . give up my life to love of my neighbour. This is really a temptation.
I feel life is so small unless it has windows into other worlds.
I cannot favour laws such as that of Idaho, which allows sterilization of 'mental defectives, epileptics, habitual criminals, moral degenerates, and sex perverts.' The last two categories here are very vague . . . The law of Idaho would have justified the sterilization of Socrates, Plato, Julius Caesar, and St. Paul.
I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose.
How about Pithecanthropus Erectus? Was it really he who ate the apple? Or was it Homo Pekiniensis?
Herd pressure is to be judged by two things: first, its intensity, and second, its direction.
Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves.
European travellers find the Japanese a smiling race.