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 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
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Happiness, Caution, Love
Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Science, Mathematics
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: Religion, Vice
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Belief
Unless a man has been taught what to do with success after getting it, the achievement of it must inevitably leave him a prey to boredom.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Bores, Success, Success is not everything, Boredom
Bad philosophers may have a certain influence; good philosophers, never.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Science, Philosophers, Philosophy
It may seem to your conceited to suppose that you can do anything important toward improving the lot of mankind. But this is a fallacy. You must believe that you can help bring about a better world. A good society is produced only by good individuals, just as truly as a majority in a presidential election is produced by the votes of single electors. Everybody can do something toward creating in his own environment kindly feelings rather than anger, reasonableness rather than hysteria, happiness rather than misery.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Doing Your Best, Problem-solving
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
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Civilization, Intelligence
The institution of representative government to us seems an essential part of democracy, but the ancients never thought of it. Its immense merit was that it enabled a large constituency to exert indirect power, and thus made possible the distribution of political responsibility throughout the great states of modern times.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Government
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Knowledge, Pleasure
Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Awareness
Change is one thing, progress another. “Change” is scientific, “progress” is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Progress
The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Emotions
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Change, Enjoyment, Hope, Happiness, Aspirations
Society cannot exist without law and order, and cannot advance except through vigorous innovators.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Law
A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Stupidity
For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favorable and unfavorable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern; all alike, I should say, result from paucity of experience.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Women
Boys and young men acquire readily the moral sentiments of their social milieu, whatever these sentiments may be.
—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
No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor, but honest.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Animals
Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Envy
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 A. Russell
Topics: Experience
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: One liners, Education, Ignorance, Stupidity, Men
It will be said that the joy of mental adventure must be rare, that there are few who can appreciate it, and that ordinary education can take no account of so aristocratic a good. I do not believe this. The joy of mental adventure is far commoner in the young than in grown men and women. …It is rare in later life because everything is done to kill it during education.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Education
Men sometimes speak as though the progress of science must necessarily be a boon to mankind, but that, I fear, is one of the comfortable nineteenth century delusions which our more disillusioned age must discard.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Science
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.
—Bertrand A. Russell
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
This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Philosophy
Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Men
If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation will you prefer the grain to the vote?
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Perspective, Politics
The best practical advice I can give to the present generation is to practice the virtue which the Christians call love.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Advice, Kindness, Love, Truth
Thinking you know when in fact you don’t is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Mistakes
An individual human existence should be like a river
—Bertrand A. Russell
If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances, it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Chance, Happiness, Circumstance, Kindness, Goodwill, Helpfulness
A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not endured with patient resignation.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Duty, Friendship
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.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Illusion
Since evolution became fashionable, the glorification of Man has taken a new form.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Evolution
An educator should think of a child as a garderner thinks of a plant, as something to be made to grow by having the right soil and the right kind amount of water. If your roses fail to bloom, it does not occur to you to whip them, but you should try to find out what has been amiss in your treatment of them… The important thing is what the children do, and not what they do not do. And what they do, if it is to have value, must be a spontaneous expression of their own vital energy.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Teaching
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