“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
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Intellectual
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“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 with his instincts, he will accept it even on the slenderest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Religion
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“No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Political
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“A religious creed differs from a scientific theory in claiming to embody eternal and absolutely certain truth, whereas science is always tentative, expecting that modification in its present theories will sooner or later be found necessary, and aware that its method is one which is logically incapable of arriving at a complete and final demonstration.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Religion
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“Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Religion
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“I am not suggesting that there should be no morality and no self-restraint in regard to sex, any more than in regard to food. In regard to food we have restraints of three kinds, those of law, those of manners, and those of health. We regard it as wrong to steal food, to take more than our share at a common meal, and to eat in ways that are likely to make us ill. Restraints of a similar kind are essential where sex is concerned, but in this case they are much more complex and involve much more self-control. Moreover, since one human being ought not to have property in another, the analogue of stealing is not adultery, but rape, which obviously must be forbidden by law. The questions that arise in regard to health are concerned almost entirely with venereal disease.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Sex
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“I had supposed until that time that it was quite common for parents to love their children, but the war persuaded me that it is a rare exception. I had supposed that most people liked money better than almost anything else, but I discovered that they liked destruction even better. I had supposed that intellectuals frequently loved truth, but I found here again that not ten per cent of them prefer truth to popularity.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: War
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“In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word “experience” have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Experience
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“So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Intelligence
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“Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Intelligence
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“The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Family
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“Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Education
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“We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Education
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“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Wisdom
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“An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there isa God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, an Agnostic may hold that the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not worth considering in practice. In that case, he is not far removed from atheism. His attitude may be that which a careful philosopher would have towards the gods of ancient Greece. If I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive arguments. An Agnostic may think the Christian God as improbable as the Olympians; in that case, he is, for practical purposes, at one with the atheists.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Atheism
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“A religious creed differs from a scientific theory in claiming to embody eternal and absolutely certain truth, whereas science isalways tentative, expecting that modification in its present theories will sooner or later be found necessary, and aware that its method is one which is logically incapable of arriving at a complete and final demonstration.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Science
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“It seems to me that science has a much greater likelihood of being true in the main than any philosophy hitherto advanced (I do not, of course, except my own). In science there are many matters about which people are agreed; in philosophy there are none. Therefore, although each proposition in a science may be false, and it is practically certain that there are some that are false, yet we shall be wise to build our philosophy upon science, because the risk of error in philosophy is pretty sure to be greater than in science. If we could hope for certainty in philosophy, the matter would be otherwise, but so far as I can see such a hope would be a chimerical.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Science
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“In astronomy, the law of gravitation is plainly better worth knowing than the position of a particular planet on a particular night, or even on every night throughout a year. There are in the law a splendour and simplicity and sense of mastery which illuminate a mass of otherwise uninteresting details…. But in history the matter is far otherwise…. Historical facts, many of them, have an intrinsic value, a profound interest on their own account, which makes them worthy of study, quite apart from any possibility of linking them together by means of causal laws.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Science
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“In science men have discovered an activity of the very highest value in which they are no longer, as in art, dependent for progress upon the appearance of continually greater genius, for in science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Science
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“Science seems to be at war with itself…. Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false.Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false.”
Bertrand Russell
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Science
