Quotes by Bertrand Russell

[Upon hearing via Littlewood an exposition on the theory of relativity:]
--Bertrand Russell

A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree or certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world suffers.
--Bertrand Russell

It can be shown that a mathematical web of some kind can be woven about any universe containing several objects. The fact that our universe lends itself to mathematical treatment is not a fact of any great philosophical significance.
--Bertrand Russell

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
--Bertrand Russell

How dare we speak of the laws of chance? Is not chance the antithesis of all law?
--Bertrand Russell

Mathematics takes us still further from what is human into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual world, but every possible world, must conform.
--Bertrand Russell

If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.
--Bertrand Russell

Thus 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 Russell

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway about the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
--Bertrand Russell

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
--Bertrand Russell

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
--Bertrand Russell

Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.
--Bertrand Russell

A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. Certain characteristics of the subject are clear. To begin with, we do not, in this subject, deal with particular things or particular properties: we deal formally with what can be said about "any" thing or "any" property. We are prepared to say that one and one are two, but not that Socrates and Plato are two, because, in our capacity of logicians or pure mathematicians, we have never heard of Socrates or Plato. A world in which there were no such individuals would still be a world in which one and one are two. It is not open to us, as pure mathematicians or logicians, to mention anything at all, because, if we do so we introduce something irrelevant and not formal.
--Bertrand Russell

Either man will abolish war, or war will abolish man.
--Bertrand Russell

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
--Bertrand Russell

The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.
--Bertrand Russell

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
--Bertrand Russell

At first it seems obvious, but the more you think about it the stranger the deductions from this axiom seem to become; in the end you cease to understand what is meant by it.
--Bertrand Russell

"But," you might say, "none of this shakes my belief that 2 and 2 are 4." You are quite right, except in marginal cases -- and it is only in marginal cases that you are doubtful whether a certain animal is a dog or a certain length is less than a meter. Two must be two of something, and the proposition "2 and 2 are 4" is useless unless it can be applied. Two dogs and two dogs are certainly four dogs, but cases arise in which you are doubtful whether two of them are dogs. "Well, at any rate there are four animals," you may say. But there are microorganisms concerning which it is doubtful whether they are animals or plants. "Well, then living organisms," you say. But there are things of which it is doubtful whether they are living organisms or not. You will be driven into saying: "Two entities and two entities are four entities." When you have told me what you mean by "entity," we will resume the argument.
--Bertrand Russell

No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
--Bertrand Russell

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.
--Bertrand Russell

Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing what physics really asserts, since the words of everyday life are not sufficiently abstract. Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.
--Bertrand Russell

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.
--Bertrand Russell

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing.
--Bertrand Russell

I wanted certainty in the kind of way in which people want religious faith. I thought that certainty is more likely to be found in mathematics than elsewhere. But I discovered that many mathematical demonstrations, which my teachers expected me to accept, were full of fallacies, and that, if certainty were indeed discoverable in mathematics, it would be in a new field of mathematics, with more solid foundations than those that had hitherto been thought secure. But as the work proceeded, I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was no more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.
--Bertrand Russell