( Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell (18 May 1872 – 2
February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician,
historian, and social critic. Bertrand Russell was a prominent anti-war
activist; he championed free trade and anti-imperialism. Russell went to
prison for his pacifism during World War I. Bertrand Russell led the
British "revolt against idealism" in the early 20th century. Bertrand
Russell is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along
with his predecessor Gottlob Frege and his friend Ludwig Wittgenstein. )
- I resolved from the beginning of my quest that I would not be
misled by sentiment and desire into beliefs for which there was no
good evidence.
- Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up
hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?
- It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can
prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.
- Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure
our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else. If you
wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others
also happy.
- The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
- It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else,
that prevents men from living freely and nobly.
- To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason,
and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.
- Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most
fatal to true happiness.
- Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now
accepted was once eccentric.
- The only thing that will redeem mankind is co-operation.
- To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are
already three parts dead.
- I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a
smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: "The bigs hit me, so I
hit the babies; that's fair." In these words he epitomized the
history of the human race.
- This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible
and is something which no one with one spark of humanity can
tolerate. I will not pretend to obey a government which is
organising a mass massacre of mankind.
- The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their
children to be a credit to them.
- The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world
the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
- Americans need rest, but do not know it. I believe this to be a
large part of the explanation of the crime wave in the United
States.
- Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent
feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young; the
other tenth is physiological, and will occur in one way or another
whatever the state of the law may be.
- Joy of life... depends upon a certain spontaneity in regard to
sex. Where sex is repressed, only work remains, and a gospel of work
for work's sake never produced any work worth doing.
- Pythagoras... was intellectually one of the most important men
that ever lived... Mathematics, in the sense of demonstrative
deductive argument, begins with him, and in him is intimately
connected with a peculiar form of mysticism. The influence of
mathematics on philosophy, partly owing to him, has, ever since his
time, been both profound and unfortunate.
- Heraclitus repeatedly speaks of "God" as distinct from "the
gods." ...God, no doubt, is the embodiment of cosmic justice.
- Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud
of the fact.
- There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy
it; the other, that you can boast about it.
- The businessman's religion and glory demand that he should make
much money; therefore, like the Hindu widow, he suffers the torment
gladly.
- One should respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to
avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes
beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
- No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none
was ever so wicked as each believes the other.
- Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but
supreme beauty.
- Most literary men is obsessed with the idea that science has not
fulfilled its promises. They do not, of course, tell us what these
promises were. This is an entire delusion, fostered by those writers
and clergymen who do not wish their specialties to be thought of
little value.
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