Quotes from Bertrand Russell

It must be admitted, for the reasons already stated, that logical principles are known to us, and cannot be themselves proved by experience, since all proof presupposes them. In this, therefore, which was the most important point of the controversy, the rationalists were in the right. On the other hand, even that part of our knowledge which is logically independent of experience (in the sense that experience cannot prove it) is yet elicited and caused by experience.

if you sympathise with everybody it comes to much the same as sympathising with none

Every proposition, true or false—so the present theory contends—ascribes a predicate to a subject, and—what is a corollary from the above—there is only one subject. The consequences of this doctrine are so strange, that I cannot believe they have been realized by those who maintain it. The theory is in fact self-contradictory.

Whenever there is acute danger, the impulse of most people is to seek out Authority and submit to it; at such moments, few would dream of revolution. When war breaks out, people have similar feelings towards the Government.

Plato is perpetually getting into trouble through not understanding relative terms. He thinks that if A is greater than B and less than C, then A is at once great and small, which seems to him a contradiction. Such troubles are among the infantile diseases of philosophy.

Belief in eternal hell-fire was an essential item of Christian belief until pretty recent times. In this country, as

I feel a real and solid pleasure when anybody points out a fallacy in any of my views, because I care much less about my opinions than about their being true.

Todo homem, aonde quer que vá, está envolto por uma nuvem de convicções confortadoras, que se deslocam com ele como moscas em um dia de verão.

Consequently I shall not insist that a Christian must believe in hell.

The notion that a term can be modified arises from neglect to observe the eternal self-identity of all terms and all logical concepts, which alone form the constituents of propositions.* What is called modification consists merely in having at one time, but not at another, some specific relation to some other specific term; but the term which sometimes has and sometimes has not the relation in question must be unchanged, otherwise it would not be that term which had ceased to have the relation.

There are those who believe that almost any group of men, when once it has seized the machinery of the State, can, by means of propaganda, secure general acquiescence.

Must think for thyself instead of merely taking scraps from different people - that is what makes thy opinions so disjointed, because thee takes different opinions from different people, thinking the two subjects independent - but no two subjects are really independent

One hundred and fifty years of science have proved more explosive than five thousand years of prescientific culture. It would be absurd to suppose that the explosive power of science is exhausted, or has even reached its maximum. It is far more likely that science will continue for centuries to come to produce more and more rapid changes.

All ancient empires suffered from revolts, often led by provincial governors; and even when no overt revolt occurred, local autonomy was almost unavoidable except when conquest was recent, and was apt, in the course of time, to develop into independence. No large State of antiquity was governed from the centre to nearly the same extent as is now customary; and the chief reason for this was lack of rapid mobility.

We might state the argument by which [idealists] support their view in some such way as this: 'Whatever can be thought of is an idea in the mind of the person thinking of it; therefore nothing can be thought of except ideas in minds; therefore anything else is inconceivable, and what is inconceivable cannot exist.

I regard love as one of the most important things in human life, and I regard any system as bad which interferes unnecessarily with its free development.

There was at this time in Athens an extraordinarily large number of men of genius. The three great dramatists, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, all belong to the fifth century. Aeschylus fought at Marathon and saw the battle of Salamis. Sophocles was still religiously orthodox. But Euripides was influenced by Protagoras and by the free-thinking spirit of the time, and his treatment of the myths is sceptical and subversive. Aristophanes, the comic poet, made fun of Socrates, Sophists

I do not agree with Plato, but if anything could make me do so, it would be Aristotle's arguments against him.

The empires of Attila and Genghis Khan were transitory; and the nations of Europe lost most of their possessions in the New World. But with modern technique most empires are fairly safe except against external attack, and revolution is only to be expected after defeat in war.

Thus every principle of simplicity urges us to adopt the natural view, that there really are objects other than ourselves and our sense-data which have an existence not dependent upon our perceiving them.

Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do. Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told, and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment.

in countries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness is more difficult, and a great public propaganda will be required to inaugurate it. I hope that, after reading the following pages, the leaders of the Y.M.C.A. will start a campaign to induce good young men to do nothing. If so, I shall not have lived in vain.

The best we can do, according to Bradley, is to say things that are 'not intellectually corrigible'—further progress is only possible through a synthesis of thought and feeling, which, when achieved, will lead to our saying nothing. Ideas have degrees of truth, greater or less according to the stage at which they come in the dialectic.

Frege's work it followed that arithmetic, and pure mathematics generally, is nothing but a prolongation of deductive logic. This disproved Kant's theory that arithmetical propositions are 'synthetic' and involve a reference to time. The development of pure mathematics from logic was set forth in detail in Principia Mathematica, by Whitehead and myself.