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Bertrand Russell Quotes about Art

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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.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

Bertrand Russell
Education, Art, Philosophy
Bertrand Russell, Richard A. Rempel, Beryl Haslam (2000). “Uncertain Paths to Freedom: Russia and China, 1919-22”, p.356, Psychology Press

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the georgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

Bertrand Russell
Art, Truth, Science
Philosophical Essays (1910) no. 4

Mathematics is only the art of saying the same thing in different words.

Bertrand Russell
Art, Different, Mathematics
Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.727, Routledge

Gradually, ... the aspect of science as knowledge is being thrust into the background by the aspect of science as the power of manipulating nature. It is because science gives us the power of manipulating nature that it has more social importance than art. Science as the pursuit of truth is the equal, but not the superior, of art. Science as a technique, though it may have little intrinsic value, has a practical importance to which art cannot aspire.

Bertrand Russell
Art, Knowledge, Science
Bertrand Russell (2017). “The Scientific Outlook”, p.16, Routledge

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. ... In art nothing worth doing can be done without genius; in science even a very moderate capacity can contribute to a supreme achievement.

Bertrand Russell
Art, Science, Men
Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays”, p.41, Booklassic

It seems to me now that mathematics is capable of an artistic excellence as great as that of any music, perhaps greater; not because the pleasure it gives (although very pure) is comparable, either in intensity or in the number of people who feel it, to that of music, but because it gives in absolute perfection that combination, characteristic of great art, of godlike freedom, with the sense of inevitable destiny; because, in fact, it constructs an ideal world where everything is perfect and yet true.

Bertrand Russell
Art, Destiny, Numbers
Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.162, Routledge

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 Russell
Love, Art, Philosophy

[Freedom] is the greatest of political goods. I do not say freedom is the greatest of all goods: the best things come from within they are such things as creative art, and love, and thought. Such things can be helped or hindered by political conditions, but not actually produced by them; and freedom is, both in itself and in its relation to these other goods the best thing that political and economic conditions can secure.

Bertrand Russell
Art, Creative, Political
Bertrand Russell (2015). “Proposed Roads to Freedom”, p.85, Booklassic

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

Bertrand Russell
Art, Responsibility, Sacrifice
Bertrand Russell (2016). “Mysticism and Logic”, p.164, Bertrand Russell

Mankind is divided into two classes: those who, being artificial, praise nature, and those who, being natural, praise art.

Bertrand Russell
Art, Class, Two
Bertrand Russell (2013). “Mortals and Others, Volume I: American Essays 1931-1935”, p.24, Routledge

The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection.

Bertrand Russell
Happiness, Art, Mean
Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.19, Routledge

You, your families, your friends and your countries are to be exterminated by the common decision of a few brutal but powerful men. To please these men, all the private affections, all the public hopes, all that has been achieved in art, and knowledge and thought and all that might be achieved hereafter is to be wiped out forever. Our ruined lifeless planet will continue for countless ages to circle aimlessly round the sun unredeemed by the joys and loves, the occasional wisdom and the power to create beauty which have given value to human life.

Bertrand Russell
Country, Art, Powerful

Philosophy, for Plato, is a kind of vision, the 'vision of truth'...Everyone who has done any kind of creative work has experienced, in a greater or less degree, the state of mind in which, after long labour, truth or beauty appears, or seems to appear, in a sudden glory - it may only be about some small matter, or it may be about the universe. I think that most of the best creative work, in art, in science, in literature, and in philosophy, has been a result of just such a moment.

Bertrand Russell
Art, Plato, Philosophy

The essence of education is that it is a change effected in the organism to satisfy the operator.

Bertrand Russell
Art, Philosophy, Essence

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty-a beauty cold and austere ... yet sublimely pure and capable of stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.

Bertrand Russell
Art, Math, Perfection
"The Study of Mathematics" (1902)

The significance of a fact is relative to [the general body of scientific] knowledge. To say that a fact is significant in science, is to say that it helps to establish or refute some general law; for science, though it starts from observation of the particular, is not concerned essentially with the particular, but with the general. A fact, in science, is not a mere fact, but an instance. In this the scientist differs from the artist, who, if he deigns to notice facts at all, is likely to notice them in all their particularity.

Bertrand Russell
Art, Knowledge, Science

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