Bertrand Russell on Philosophy

"The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge."

"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."

"Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning."

"As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles."

"The supreme maxim in scientific philosophising is this: wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities."

"The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture."

"Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies, and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him."

"Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one."

"When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself."

"What does not exist must be something, or it would be meaningless to deny its existence; and hence we need the concept of being, as that which belongs even to the non-existent."

"Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business."

"In art aim at being exquisite, and in life at being reasonable."

"The tendency of our perceptions is to emphasise increasingly the objective elements in an impression, unless we have some special reason, as artists have, for doing the opposite."

"Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know."

"Among human beings, the subjection of women is much more complete at a certain level of civilization than it is among savages. And the subjection is always reinforced by morality."

"We are speaking on this occasion, not as members of this or that nation, continent, or creed, but as human beings, members of the species Man, whose continued existence is in doubt."

"I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy."

"The History of Western Philosophy"

"The Problems of Philosophy"

"Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays"

"The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

"The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment."

"Written words differ from spoken words in being material structures. A spoken word is a process in the physical world, having an essential time-order; a written word is a series of pieces of matter, having an essential space-order."

"The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists in the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself."

"The conception of the necessary unit of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of the imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the straitwaistcoated benevolent institution which idealism palms off as the totality of being."

"Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical."

"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."

"I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it."

"Many agnostics are quite as doubtful of the body as they are of the soul, but this is a long story taking one into difficult metaphysics. Mind and matter alike, I should say, are only convenient symbol in discourse, not actually existing things."

"I must confess that I am deeply troubled. I fear that human beings are intent upon acting out a vast deathwish and that it lies with us now to make every effort to promote resistance to the insanity and brutality of policies which encompass the extermination of hundreds of millions of human beings."