Bertrand Russell quotes - page 25

I am delighted to know that Principia Mathematica can now be done by machinery... I am quite willing to believe that anything in deductive logic can be done by machinery. (Bertrand Russell)
The three main extra-rational activities in modern life are religion, war, and love all these are extra-rational, but love is not anti-rational, that is to say, a reasonable man may reasonably rejoice in its existence. View quote
Bertrand Russell
People are said to believe in God, or to disbelieve in Adam and Eve. But in such cases what is believed or disbelieved is that there is an entity answering a certain description. This, which can be believed or disbelieved is quite different from the actual entity (if any) which does answer the description. Thus the matter of belief is, in all cases, different in kind from the matter of sensation or presentation, and error is in no way analogous to hallucination. A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it. View quote
Bertrand Russell
One of the troubles about vanity is that it grows with what it feeds on. The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Dora and I are now married, but just as happy as we were before. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Every living thing is a sort of imperialist, seeking to transform as much as possible of its environment into itself ... When we compare the (present) human population of the globe with ... that of former times, we see that 'chemical imperialism' has been ... the main end to which human intelligence has been devoted. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Those who in principle oppose birth control are either incapable of arithmetic or else in favour of war, pestilence and famine as permanent features of human life. View quote
Bertrand Russell
I am paid by the word, so I always write the shortest words possible. View quote
Bertrand Russell
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. View quote
Bertrand Russell
A proverb is one man's wit and all men's wisdom. View quote
Bertrand Russell
The qualities most needed are charity and tolerance, not some form of fanatical faith such as is offered to us by the various rampant isms. (Bertrand Russell)
Throughout the long period of religious doubt, I had been rendered very unhappy by the gradual loss of belief, but when the process was completed, I found to my surprise that I was quite glad to be done with the whole subject. View quote
Bertrand Russell
If a philosophy is to bring happiness it should be inspired by kindly feelings. Marx pretended that he wanted the happiness of the proletariat what he really wanted was the unhappiness of the bourgeois. View quote
Bertrand Russell
To a modern mind, it is difficult to feel enthusiastic about a virtuous life if nothing is going to be achieved by it. View quote
Bertrand Russell
For over two thousand years it has been the custom among earnest moralists to decry happiness as something degraded and unworthy. View quote
Bertrand Russell
You may, if you are an old-fashioned schoolmaster, wish to consider yourself full of universal benevolence and at the same time derive great pleasure from caning boys. In order to reconcile these two desires you have to persuade yourself that caning. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good. View quote
Bertrand Russell
The pleasure of work is open to anyone who can develop some specialised skill, provided that he can get satisfaction from the exercise of his skill without demanding universal applause. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Law in origin was merely a codification of the power of dominant groups, and did not aim at anything that to a modern man would appear to be justice. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture. (Bertrand Russell)
We have to learn to think in a new way. View quote
Bertrand Russell
The pursuit of philosophy is founded on the belief that knowledge is good, even if what is known is painful. View quote
Bertrand Russell
There are a number of purely theoretical questions, of perennial and passionate interest, which science is unable to answer, at any rate at present. View quote
Bertrand Russell
The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age. View quote
Bertrand Russell