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 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.'
Herd pressure is to be judged by two things: first, its intensity, and second, its direction.
My first advice on how not to grow old would be to choose you ancestors carefully.
The first step in wisdom, as well as in morality, is to open the windows of the ego as wide as possible.
We believe, first and foremost, what makes us feel that we are fine fellows.
At first it seems obvious, but the more you think about it the stranger the deductions from this axiom seem to become; in the end you cease to understand what is meant by it.
If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.
Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.
In all the creative work that I have done, what has come first is a problem, a puzzle involving discomfort.
Freedom in education has many aspects. There is first of all freedom to learn or not to learn. Then there is freedom as to what to learn. And in later education there is freedom of opinion.
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is its exact opposite.
Cruelty is in theory a perfectly adequate ground for divorce, but it may be interpreted so as to become absurd
Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.