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
government knowledge-and-power adequate
There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
belief stoic skeptic
Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics.
prayer humility law
It is not my prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.
philosophy thinking ingenious
Philosophy is an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously.
happiness depressing hate
Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.
happiness art mean
The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection.
interesting giving important
This illustrates an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences to which it gives rise.
kings parent disrespect
If throughout your life you abstain from murder, theft, fornication, perjury, blasphemy, and disrespect toward your parents, church, and your king, you are conventionally held to deserve moral admiration even if you have never done a single kind, generous or useful action. This very inadequate notion of virtue is an outcome of taboo morality, and has done untold harm.
oxygen water brain
A drop of water is not immortal; it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution we should be inclined to be skeptical. In like manner we know that the brain is not immortal...
country thinking needs
I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.
past men vanity
From that awful encounter of the soul with the outer world, enunciation, wisdom, and charity are born; and with their birth a new life begins. To take into the inmost shrine of the soul the irresistible forces whose puppets we seem to be - Death and change, the irrevocableness of the past, and the powerlessness of Man before the blind hurry of the universe from vanity to vanity - to feel these things and know them is to conquer them.
philosophy stupid hate
A good social system is not to be secured by making people unselfish, but, by making their own vital impulses fit in with other peoples. This is feasible. Those who have produced stoic philosophies have all had enough to eat and drink. I feel I shall find the truth on my deathbed and be surrounded by people too stupid to understand—fussing about medicines instead of searching for wisdom. I hate being all tidy like a book in a library where nobody reads – prison is horribly like that.
obstacles dogmatism humans
Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness.
famous-love falling-in-love new-relationship
It's easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.