Bertrand Russell Fact Quotations

The Eugenic Society . . . is perpetually bewailing the fact that wage-earners breed faster than middle-class people.

No satisfaction based upon self-deception is solid.

So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it.

Our beliefs are, however, often contrary to fact.

Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning

What vanity needs for its satisfaction is glory, and it's easy to have glory without power.

To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century.

It can be shown that a mathematical web of some kind can be woven about any universe containing several objects. The fact that our universe lends itself to mathematical treatment is not a fact of any great philosophical significance.

Thinking you know when in fact you don't is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone

Formality Thus the absence of all mention of particular things or properties in logic or pure mathematics is a necessary result of the fact that this study is, as we say, "purely formal".

At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.

Sir Arthur Eddington deduces religion from the fact that atoms do not obey the laws of mathematics. Sir James Jeans deduces it from the fact that they do.

The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth.

The satisfaction to be derived from success in a great constructive enterprise is one of the most massive that life has to offer.

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.