Quote

Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.

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
Mistake
Avoided
Open
Devices
Simple
Fewer
Science
Teeth
Keep
Mouth
Women
Mouths
Aristotle
Men
Scientist
Counted
Thinking
Asking
Device

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

Image
Envy ... is one form of a vice, partly moral, partly intellectual, which consists in seeing things never in themselves but only in their relations.
Bertrand Russell
Image
There are certain things that our age needs. It needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Man can be stimulated by hope or driven by fear, but the hope and the fear must be vivid and immediate if they are to be effective without producing weariness.
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
As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our trouble. . . . No Catholic, for instance, takes seriously the text which says that a Bishop should be the husband of one wife.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The three main extra-rational activities in modern life are religion, war, and love. all these are extra-rational, but love is not anti-rational, that is to say, a reasonable man may reasonably rejoice in its existence
Bertrand Russell
Image
The tendency of our perceptions is to emphasise increasingly the objective elements in an impression, unless we have some special reason, as artists have, for doing the opposite.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens.
Bertrand Russell
Image
I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose.
Bertrand Russell
Image
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
Bertrand Russell
Image
I say people who feel they must have a faith or religion in order to face life are showing a kind of cowardice, which in any other sphere would be considered contemptible. But when it is in the religious sphere it is thought admirable, and I cannot admire cowardice whatever sphere it is in.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.
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
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
Image
The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple I should say: Love is wise - Hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The newspapers at one time said that I was dead but after carefully examining the evidence I came to the conclusion that this statement was false.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them.
Bertrand Russell
Image
In emancipation from the fears that beset the slave of circumstance he will experience a profound joy, and through all the vicissitudes of his outward life he will remain in the depths of his being a happy man.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable, and praised when they are not praiseworthy.
Bertrand Russell