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Bertrand Russell Quotes about Past

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Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Past, Degrees
Bertrand Russell, Robert Charles Marsh (1988). “Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901-1950”, p.180, Psychology Press

I think it would be just to say the most essential characteristic of mind is memory, using this word in its broadest sense to include every influence of past experience on present reactions.

Bertrand Russell
Memories, Science, Past
Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.285, Psychology Press

A European who goes to New York and Chicago sees the future... when he goes to Asia he sees the past.

Bertrand Russell
New York, Past, Chicago
Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”, p.555, Psychology Press

There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago.

Bertrand Russell
Past, Atheism, Events
Bertrand Russell (2016). “The Analysis of Mind”, p.223, Bertrand Russell

Indemnity for the past and security for the future.

Bertrand Russell
Future, Past, Security
"Memoir of Fox". Book by Siegfried Sassoon, vol. iii, 1928.

Citizens as conceived by governments are persons who admire the status quo and are prepared to exert themselves for its preservation. Oddly enough, while all governments aim at producing men of this type to the exclusion of all other types, their heroes in the past are of exactly the sort that they aim at preventing in the present. Americans admire George Washington and Jefferson, but imprison those who share their political opinions.

Bertrand Russell
Hero, Men, Past
Bertrand Russell (2013). “Education and the Social Order”, p.11, Routledge

One of the commonest things to do with savings is to lend them to some Government. In view of the fact that the bulk of the public expenditure of most civilized Governments consists in payment for past wars or preparation for future wars, the man who lends his money to a Government is in the same position as the bad men in Shakespeare who hire murderers. The net result of the man's economical habits is to increase the armed forces of the State to which he lends his savings. Obviously it would be better if he spent the money, even if he spent it in drink or gambling.

Bertrand Russell
War, Men, Past
Bertrand Russell (2015). “In Praise of Idleness”, p.5, Lulu Press, Inc

When we perceive any object of a familiar kind, much of what appears subjectively to be immediately given is really derived from past experience.

Bertrand Russell
Past, Kind, Given
Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Analysis of Mind: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.45, 谷月社

From that awful encounter of the soul with the outer world, enunciation, wisdom, and charity are born; and with their birth a new life begins. To take into the inmost shrine of the soul the irresistible forces whose puppets we seem to be - Death and change, the irrevocableness of the past, and the powerlessness of Man before the blind hurry of the universe from vanity to vanity - to feel these things and know them is to conquer them.

Bertrand Russell
Past, Men, Vanity
Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays”, p.52, Booklassic

In regard to the past, where contemplation is not obscured by desire and the need for action, we see, more clearly than in the lives about us, the value for good and evil, of the aims men have pursued and the means they have adopted. It is good, from time to time, to view the present as already past, and to examine what elements it contains that will add to the world's store of permanent possessions, that will live and give life when we and all our generation have perished.

Bertrand Russell
Mean, Men, Past
Bertrand Russell (1985). “Contemplation and Action, 1902-14”, p.80, Psychology Press

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