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Bertrand Russell Quotes about Philosophy

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I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

Bertrand Russell
Funny, Fear, Philosophy
"Bertrand Russell's Greatest Paradox was His Faith" by Dan Delzell, www.christianpost.com. November 4, 2011.

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

Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.

Bertrand Russell
Peace, Philosophy, Humanity
Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.565, Routledge

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Badass, Philosophy
Bertrand Russell (1995). “My Philosophical Development”, p.204, Psychology Press

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

Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Greatness, Imagination
Bertrand Russell (1997). “The Problems of Philosophy”, p.161, Oxford University Press, USA

If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody, and no unemployment — assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to use so much leisure.

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Son, Men
"In praise of idleness: and other essays".

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

Bertrand Russell
Inspirational, Philosophy, Believe

When you are studying any matter or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: what are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted by what you wish to believe, but look only and surely at what are the facts.

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Believe, Wish
BBC interview on "Face to Face", 1959.

Men who allow their love of power to give them a distorted view of the world are to be found in every asylum: one man will think he is the Governor of the Bank of England, another will think he is the King, and yet another will think he is God. Highly similar delusions, if expressed by educated men in obscure language, lead to professorships of philosophy; and if expressed by emotional men in eloquent language, lead to dictatorships.

Bertrand Russell
Kings, Philosophy, Men
Bertrand Russell (2004). “Power: A New Social Analysis”, p.220, Routledge

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

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Branches, Claims
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Our Knowledge of the External World”, p.1, Routledge

BERTRAND RUSSELL, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism We've associated that word philosophy with academic study that in its own way has gotten so far beyond the layman that if you read contemporary philosophy you've no clue, because it's almost become math. And it's odd that if you don't do that and you call yourself a philosopher that you always get 'homespun' attached to it.

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Math, Way

The legacy of Greece to Western philosophy is Western philosophy.

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Legacy, Western

Unhappy business men, I am convinced, would increase their happiness more by walking six miles every day than by any conceivable change of philosophy.

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Men, Unhappy

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Believe, Simple
Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism”, p.20, Routledge

Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possiblities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what the may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familar things in an unfamilar aspect

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Feelings, Doubt
Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Problems of Philosophy”, p.124, Lulu.com

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

Bertrand Russell
Spiritual, Philosophy, Philosophical
Bertrand Russell (2013). “An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth”, p.15, Routledge

Descartes, the father of modern philosophy ... would never-so he assures us-have been led to construct his philosophy if he had had only one teacher, for then he would have believed what he had been told; but, finding that his professors disagreed with each other, he was forced to conclude that no existing doctrine was certain.

Bertrand Russell
Teacher, Father, Philosophy
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.45, Routledge

The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Special, Argument
Bertrand Russell (2004). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.427, Routledge

Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life.

Bertrand Russell
Lying, Philosophy, Asking Questions
Bertrand Russell (2016). “The Problems of Philosophy”, p.18, Bertrand Russell

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

Bertrand Russell
Birthday, Educational, Philosophy
Bertrand Russell (2008). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Men, Instinct
Bertrand Russell (2008). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.45, Simon and Schuster

All definite knowledge - so I should contend - belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack by both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy.

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Knowledge, Men
Bertrand Russell (2008). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

Hegel's philosophy is so odd that one would not have expected him to be able to get sane men to accept it, but he did. He set it out with so much obscurity that people thought it must be profound. It can quite easily be expounded lucidly in words of one syllable, but then its absurdity becomes obvious.

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Men, People
Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.396, Psychology Press

When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Stupid, Thinking
Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.201, Routledge

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