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Bertrand Russell Quotes about Science

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Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

Bertrand Russell
Fear, Science, Infancy Is

Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.

Bertrand Russell
Knowledge, Science, Imagination
Bertrand Russell (2008). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

There are infinite possibilities of error, and more cranks take up fashionable untruths than unfashionable truths.

Bertrand Russell
Truth, Science, Errors

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

Bertrand Russell
Believe, Science, Opposites
"Sceptical Essays". Book by Bertrand Russell, Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda, 1928.

Change is scientific; progress is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.

Bertrand Russell
Change, Science, History
Bertrand Russell, Robert Edward Egner (1961). “The basic writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”

The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as a training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely utilitarian point of view as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom.

Bertrand Russell
Knowledge, Science, Views
Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”, p.409, Psychology Press

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

Bertrand Russell
Science, Doubt, Atheism
Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.92, Simon and Schuster

We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.

Bertrand Russell
Philosophical, Science, Engineering
Bertrand Russell (1985). “The ABC of relativity”, Signet

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

An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalization would be just as well founded as the generalization which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet.

Bertrand Russell
Science, History, Perfection
Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.66, 谷月社

It is a curious and painful fact that almost all the completely futile treatments that have been believed in during the long history of medical folly have been such as caused acute suffering to the patient. When anesthetics were discovered, pious people considered them an attempt to evade the will of God. It was pointed out, however, that when God extracted Adam's rib He put him into a deep sleep. This proved that anesthetics are all right for men; women, however, ought to suffer, because of the curse of Eve.

Bertrand Russell
Pain, Sleep, Science
Bertrand Russell (1972). “Atheism: collected essays, 1943-1949”, Arno Pr

All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.

Bertrand Russell
Math, Science, Ideas
Bertrand Russell (2001). “The Scientific Outlook”, p.45, Psychology Press

I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

Bertrand Russell
Lying, Knowledge, Science
Bertrand Russell (1997). “Religion and Science”, p.243, Oxford University Press, USA

A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.

Bertrand Russell
Science, Errors, Hallucinations
Bertrand Russell, Robert Charles Marsh (1988). “Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901-1950”, p.149, Psychology Press

Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a long period, as, for example, ancient Egypt persisted, or does it necessarily contain within itself forces which must bring either decay or explosion?

Bertrand Russell
Science, Egypt, Long
Bertrand Russell (2016). “The Impact of Science on Society”, p.87, Routledge

Scientific method, although in its more refined forms it may seem complicated, is in essence remarkably simply. It consists in observing such facts as will enable the observer to discover general laws governing facts of the kind in question. The two stages, first of observation, and second of inference to a law, are both essential, and each is susceptible of almost indefinite refinement. (1931)

Bertrand Russell
Science, Law, Essence
Bertrand Russell (2017). “The Scientific Outlook”, p.19, Routledge

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

Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.

Bertrand Russell
Math, Science, Air
Bertrand Russell (1993). “The Quotable Bertrand Russell”

Science seems to be at war with itself.... Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false.

Bertrand Russell
War, Science, Technology

Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man. Every careful measurement in science is always given with the probable error ... every observer admits that he is likely wrong, and knows about how much wrong he is likely to be.

Bertrand Russell
Truth, Science, Men
"The Scientific Outlook".

In attempting to understand the elements out of which mental phenomena are compounded, it is of the greatest importance to remember that from the protozoa to man there is nowhere a very wide gap either in structure or in behaviour. From this fact it is a highly probable inference that there is also nowhere a very wide mental gap.

Bertrand Russell
Science, Men, Mind
Bertrand Russell (2016). “The Analysis of Mind”, p.54, Bertrand Russell

You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.

Bertrand Russell
Science, Men, Years

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

At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. ... I had not imagined that there was anything so delicious in the world. After I had learned the fifth proposition, my brother told me that it was generally considered difficult, but I had found no difficulty whatsoever. This was the first time it had dawned on me that I might have some intelligence.

Bertrand Russell
Brother, Science, Age
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Autobiography”, p.25, 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

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