Quote

Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.

Bertrand Russell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Bertrand Russell
Age: 97 †
Born: 1872
Born: May 18
Died: 1970
Died: February 2
Analytic Philosopher
Autobiographer
Epistemologist
Essayist
Journalist
Logician
Mathematician
Metaphysician
Peace Activist
Philosopher
Tryleg
Bertrand Arthur William Russell
Russell
Bertrand Russell
3rd Earl Russell
Bertrand Russell
Earl Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell
3rd Earl Russell
Habit
Merciless
Comfortable
Subversive
Terrible
Swift
Free
Established
Thought
Destructive
Great
Revolutionary
Privilege
Institutions

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

Image
Mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The difficulty is old, but none the less real. An omnipotent being who created a world containing evil not due to sin must Himself be at least partially evil.
Bertrand Russell
Image
War...seems a mere madness, a collective insanity.
Bertrand Russell
Image
There are three ways of securing a society that shall be stable as regards population. The first is that of birth control, the second that of infanticide or really destructive wars, and the third that of general misery except for a powerful minority.
Bertrand Russell
Image
There is in Aristotle an almost complete absence of what may be called benevolence or philanthropy. The sufferings of mankind . . . there is no evidence that they cause him unhappiness except when the sufferers happen to be his friends.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Respectability, regularity, and routine - the whole cast-iron discipline of a modern industrial society - have atrophied the artistic impulse, and imprisoned love so that it can no longer be generous and free and creative, but must be either stuffy or furtive.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The great majority of men and women, in ordinary times, pass through life without ever contemplating or criticising, as a whole, either their own conditions or those of the world at large.
Bertrand Russell
Image
For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favorable and unfavorable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern all alike, I should say, result from paucity of experience.
Bertrand Russell
Image
God and Satan alike are essentially human figures, the one a projection of ourselves, the other of our enemies.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The man who pursues happiness wisely will aim at the possession of a number of subsidiary interests in addition to those central ones upon which his life is built.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The Axiom of Choice is necessary to select a set from an infinite number of socks, but not an infinite number of shoes.
Bertrand Russell
Image
RELIGION: A set of beliefs held as dogmas, dominating the conduct of life, going beyond or contrary to evidence, and inculcated by methods which are emotional or authoritarian, not intellectual.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Even in civilized mankind faint traces of monogamous instinct can be perceived.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Religions which have any very strong hold over men's actions have generally some instinctive basis.
Bertrand Russell
Image
All traditional logic habitually assumes that precise symbols are being employed. It is therefore not applicable to this terrestial life but only to an imagined celestial existence... logic takes us nearer to heaven than other studies.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Each act of cruelty is eternally a part of the universe nothing that happens later can make that act good rather than bad, or can confer perfection on the whole of which it is a part.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Change is scientific progress is ethical change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
Bertrand Russell