Bertrand Russell Quotes

• No one can sit at the bedside of a dying child and still believe in God.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in God

  Tags in Child, Believe

• The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Without civic morality communities perish; without personal morality their survival has no value.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

• To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Friendship

• It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Freedom

• I’ve got a one-dimensional mind.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

• This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible, and is something that no one with a spark of humanity can tolerate. I will not pretend to obey a Government that is organizing a mass massacre of mankind.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

• I do not think it possible to get anywhere if we start from scepticism. We must start from a broad acceptance of whatever seems to be knowledge and is not rejected for some specific reason.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

• There is only one constant preoccupation: I have throughout been anxious to discover how much we can be said to know and with what degree of certainty or doubtfulness.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a long period, as, for example, ancient Egypt persisted, or does it necessarily contain within itself forces which must bring either decay or explosion?

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Two men who differ as to the ends of life cannot hope to agree about education.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

• I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attach too much importance to the negative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little to the positive merit of enjoying their company.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

• No rules, however wise, are a substitute for affection and tact.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

• It is, of course, clear that a country with a large foreign population must endeavour, through its schools, to assimilate the children of immigrants… It is, however, unfortunate that a large part of this process should be effected by means of a some what blatant nationalism.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

• The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interest of the desire to know.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

• The typical Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment; the typical Chinese wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as possible.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

• The essential characteristic of philosophy, which makes it a study distinct from science, is criticism. It examines critically the principles employed in science and in daily life; it searches out any inconsistencies there may be in these principles, and it only accepts them when, as the result of a critical inquiry, there is no reason for rejecting them.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

• War grows out of ordinary human nature.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in War

Bertrand Russell (182)

Birth:	18th May, 1872
Death:	2nd February, 1970
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Historian, Mathematician, Philosopher

About

Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, social critic and political activist. 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 in any profound sense. He was born in Monmouthshire, into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in Britain.

Related Authors

• James Truslow Adams
• Laurence Bergreen
• Adolphe Thiers
• Charles Tilly
• Vine Deloria Jr
• Philip Guedalla
• William Osler
• Oswald Spengler
• Michael Beschloss
• Peter Burke

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 29th March

Births

• 1959 - Perry Farrell
• 1936 - Richard Rodney Bennett
• 1916 - Eugene McCarthy
• 1961 - Michael Winterbottom
• 1927 - Martin Fleischmann

Deaths

• 1991 - Lee Atwater
• 1878 - Mark Hopkins Jr.
• 1982 - Nathan F Twining
• 1970 - Vera Brittain
• 1912 - Robert Falcon Scott