Bertrand Russel
Bertrand Russel
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRSwas a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist and Nobel laureate. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had "never been any of these things, in any profound sense". He was born in Monmouthshire into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom...
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The professional moralist in our day is a man of less than average intelligence
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There are no better friends than those forged through honest and often heated argument.
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The professors must not prevent us from realizing that history is fun, and that the most bizarre things really happen
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What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.
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What men want is not knowledge, but certainty.
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To be worthy of the name, he must be free of two things; the force of tradition and tyranny of his own passions.
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Those who first advocated religious toleration were thought wicked, and so were the early opponents of slavery.
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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 do for those who study it
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The Platonic Socrates was a pattern to subsequent Philosophers for many ages. As a man, we may believe him admitted to the communion of saints; but as a philosopher he needs a long residence in a scientific purgatory
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We must care about the world of our children and grandchildren, a world we may never see.
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Whether artificial man will be better or worse than the natural sort I do not venture to predict.
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Undoubtedly the desire for food has been, and still is, one of the main causes of great political events