Bertrand Russell (1872–1970,) fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, was a British philosopher, mathematician, logician, social critic, and peace activist. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of analytic philosophy, which is today the dominant philosophical tradition in the English-speaking world.
Russell was born in Trellech, Wales, into a prominent aristocratic family. His parents were radical thinkers, his father an atheist. After his parents died, Russell was raised by his grandparents in a strict Christian household. As a teenager, he kept a diary in which he described his doubts about God and his ideas about free will in a dairy. He wrote his diary in Greek letters so that his conservative family couldn’t read it.
Russell studied mathematics and philosophy at Cambridge and later returned as a fellow and lecturer. In Principia Mathematica (1910–13,) he and the British mathematician Alfred North Whitehead attempted to express all of mathematics in formal logic terms. Russell’s most significant and famous idea, the theory of descriptions, had profound consequences for his discipline. He further expounded logical atomism in Our Knowledge of the External World (1914) and neutral monism in The Analysis of Mind (1921.)
Russell was one of the greatest public intellectuals of the 20th century. He was active in many social and political campaigns until his death. In reaction to World War I, he became a radical pacifist, incurring government fines, a dismissal from Cambridge, and finally, a 6-month prison sentence. He supported women’s suffrage and advocated against nuclear weapons.
In 1944, Russell returned to England and was reelected a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1950, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for “his many-sided and significant writings, in which he appeared as the champion of humanity and freedom of thought.”
Russell’s enduring works shaped the face of 20th-century British philosophy. He wrote several books aimed at the public, including the bestselling The History of Western Philosophy (1945.) His other notable works include Problems of Philosophy (1912,) The Analysis of Mind (1921,) and Roads to Freedom (1918.)
Russell was a famous would-be-atheist and a confirmed agnostic—his agnosticism was reinforced by his recognition that the word “religion” does not have a very definite meaning. His well-known lecture Why I Am Not A Christian (1927) remains, to this day, a definitive, nearly creedal, proclamation of his commitment to atheism. Russell described God’s existence as “a large and serious question.” He rejected some of the classical theistic arguments (the first cause argument, the design argument, and the moral argument) for lack of evidence.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Bertrand A. Russell
The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Time, Waste, Time Management
If rational men cooperated and used their scientific knowledge to the full, they could now secure the economic welfare of all.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Science
Worry is a form of fear.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Worry, Fear
What hunger is in relation to food, zest is in relation to life.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Passion, Enthusiasm
Conventional people are roused to fury by departures from convention, largely because they regard such departures as a criticism of themselves.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Tradition
Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Scientists, Science
Boys and young men acquire readily the moral sentiments of their social milieu, whatever these sentiments may be.
—Bertrand A. Russell
One of the troubles about vanity is that it grows with what it feeds on. The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Vanity
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Philosophy
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Racism
The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Trouble
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Family, Golf
Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Sex
Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Philosophy
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 A. Russell
Topics: Vice, Religion
To be able to concentrate for a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Concentration, Focus
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth—more than ruin—more even than death … Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Thinking, Thought, Thoughts
There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Earth
There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literature or great philosophy; they will not be able to discover the secret springs of happiness in the human heart; they will know nothing of love and friendship.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Computers, Technology
Beggars do not envy millionaires, though of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Reality, Opportunities, Goals
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Professionalism, Experts
The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Joy, Happiness
All the important human advances that we know of since historical times began have been due to individuals of whom the majority faced virulent public opposition.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Progress
My sad conviction is that people can only agree about what they’re not really interested in.
—Bertrand A. Russell
It is illegal in England to state in print that a wife can and should derive sexual pleasure from intercourse
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Sex
Bad philosophers may have a certain influence; good philosophers, never.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Philosophy, Science, Philosophers
Anything you’re good at contributes to happiness.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Happiness
Religion and Science are two aspects of social life, of which the former has been important as far back as we know anything of man
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Science
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Joy, Happiness
The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.
—Bertrand A. Russell
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