Bertrand Russell quotes - page 28

We later learned that all the nineteen passengers in the non-smoking compartment had been killed. When the plane had hit the water a hole had been made in the plane and the water had rushed in. I had told a friend at Oslo who was finding me a place that he must find me a place where I could smoke, remarking jocularly, 'If I cannot smoke, I shall die'. Unexpectedly, this turned out to be true. (Bertrand Russell)
1. Generality Certain characteristics of the subject are clear. To begin with, we do not in this subject deal with particular things or particular properties we deal formally with what can be said about any thing or any property. We are prepared to say that one and one are two, but not that Socrates and Plato are two.... View quote
Bertrand Russell
Love as a relation between men and women was ruined by the desire to make sure of the legitimacy of children. View quote
Bertrand Russell
To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life slowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future. View quote
Bertrand Russell
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me. View quote
Bertrand Russell
A good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times make it almost seem like a live teacher. View quote
Bertrand Russell
There is no difference between someone who eats too little and sees Heaven and someone who drinks too much and sees snakes. View quote
Bertrand Russell
In the first place a philosophical proposition must be general. It must not deal specially with things on the surface of the earth, or within the solar system, or with any other portion of space and time.... This brings us to a second characteristic of philosophical propositions, namely that they must be a priori. A philosophical proposition must be such as can neither be proved nor disproved by empirical evidence.... Philosophy, if what has been said is correct, becomes indistinguishable from logic as that word has now come to be used. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly, they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines. View quote
Bertrand Russell
If you question any candid person who is no longer young, he is very likely to tell you that, having tasted life in this world, he has no wish to begin again as a new boy' in another. View quote
Bertrand Russell
By religion I mean a set of beliefs held as dogmas, dominating the conduct of life, going beyond or contrary to evidence, and inculcated by methods which are emotional or authoritarian, not intellectual. (Bertrand Russell)
Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Upon hearing via Littlewood an exposition on the theory of relativity To think I have spent my life on absolute muck. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Hatred of enemies is easier and more intense than love of friends. But from men who are more anxious to injure opponents than to benefit the world at large no great good is to be expected. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Our instinctive emotions are those that we have inherited from a much more dangerous world, and contain, therefore, A larger portion of fear than they should. View quote
Bertrand Russell
It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit divorced from it, they remain barren. View quote
Bertrand Russell
I did not know I loved you until I heard myself telling so, for one instance I thought, 'Good God, what have I said' and then I knew it was true. View quote
Bertrand Russell
I observe that a very large portion of the human race does not believe in God and suffers no visible punishment in consequence. And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who. View quote
Bertrand Russell
It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather that the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young. View quote
Bertrand Russell
5. a priori Logical propositions are such as can be known a priori without study of the actual world. View quote
Bertrand Russell
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. (Bertrand Russell)
Morally, a philosopher who uses his professional competence for anything except a disinterested search for truth is guilty of a kind of treachery. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Essentially, this war...is a great race-conflict, a conflict of Teuton and Slav, in which certain other nations, England, France and Belgium, have been led into cooperation with the Slav. ... The conflict of Germany and Russia has been produced not by this or that diplomatic incident, but by primitive passions expressing themselves in the temper of the two races. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. It sees man, a feeble speck, surrounded by unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears itself proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the universe. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Those who have been inspired to action by the doctrine of the class war will have acquired the habit of hatred, and will instinctively seek new enemies when the old ones have been vanquished. But in actual fact the psychology of the working man in any of the Western democracies is totally unlike that which is assumed in the Communist Manifesto. He does not by any means feel that he has nothing to lose but his chains, nor indeed is this true. The chains which bind Asia and Africa in subjection to Europe are partly riveted by him. He is himself part of a great system of tyranny and exploitation. Universal freedom would remove, not only his own chains, which are comparatively light, but the far heavier chains which he has helped to fasten upon the subject races of the world. View quote
Bertrand Russell