Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

"My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it."
224 Quotes
"My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it."
Bertrand Russell The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
"To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it."
Bertrand Russell A History of Western Philosophy
"In our own day, there has been too much of a tendency towards authority, and too little care for the preservation of initiative. Men in control of vast organisations have tended to be too abstract in their outlook, to forget what actual human beings are like, and to try to fit men to systems rather than systems to men."
Bertrand Russell Authority and the Individual
"To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already 3-parts dead."
Bertrand Russell
"Happiness, as is evident, depends partly upon external circumstances and partly upon oneself."
Bertrand Russell
"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show."
Bertrand Russell A History of Western Philosophy
"Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet."
Bertrand Russell
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
Bertrand Russell
"“Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possiblities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what the may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familar things in an unfamilar aspect”"
Bertrand Russell The Problems of Philosophy
"“Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”"
Bertrand Russell
"Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own."
Bertrand Russell What I Believe
"“As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.”"
Bertrand Russell
"“My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.”"
Bertrand Russell The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
"“To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.”"
Bertrand Russell A History of Western Philosophy
"Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them."
Bertrand Russell New Hopes for a Changing World
"“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”"
Bertrand Russell
"The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them."
Bertrand Russell
"The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf."
Bertrand Russell
"Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time."
Bertrand Russell
"Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires."
Bertrand Russell
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