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
Escape from boredom is one of the really powerful desires of almost all human beings.
Civilized life, if it is to be stable, must provide a harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting. In Australia, where people are few, and rabbits are many, I watched the whole populace satisfying the primitive impulse in the primitive manner by the skilful slaughter of many thousands of rabbits.
Christ . . . said that a man who had looked after a woman lustfully had sinned as much as the man who had seduced her. How absurd!
As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our trouble. . . . No Catholic, for instance, takes seriously the text which says that a Bishop should be the husband of one wife.
As men begin to grow civilized, they cease to be satisfied with mere taboos.
Aristotle and Plato considered Greeks so innately superior to barbarians that slavery is justified so long as the master is Greek and the slave barbarian.
Among the Tibetans, one wife has many husbands, because men are too poor to support a whole wife.
Americans need rest, but do not know it.
Africans had to be taught that nudity is wicked; this was done very cheaply by missionaries.
A million million years gives us some time to prepare for the end . . . let us make the best of it.
Logic must no more admit a unicorn than zoology can.
As for earthquakes, though they were still formidable, they were so interesting that men of science could hardly regret them.
Teachers are more than any other group the guardians of civilization.
I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of WORK, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in the organised diminution of work.