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There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.

Bertrand Russell

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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
World
Poverty
Thoughts
Idea
Ideas
Reason
Must
Dues
Really
Suppose
Things
Beginning

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told I have not noticed it.
Bertrand Russell
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The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. If you take your children for a picnic on a doubtful day, they will demand a dogmatic answer as to whether it will be fine or wet, and be disappointed in you when you cannot be sure.
Bertrand Russell
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It is not known why the Lord made the human body as he did, since one might suppose that omnipotence could have made it such as would not have shocked the nice people.
Bertrand Russell
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Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.
Bertrand Russell
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In all the creative work that I have done, what has come first is a problem, a puzzle involving discomfort.
Bertrand Russell
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Beware the man of the single book
Bertrand Russell
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Only six need be attempted.
Bertrand Russell
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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
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There are two motives for reading a book one, that you enjoy it the other, that you can boast about it.
Bertrand Russell
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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
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The doctrine (of) maintaining that the language of daily life, with words used in their ordinary meanings, suffices for philosophy . . . I find myself totally unable to accept . . . . Because it makes almost inevitable the perpetuation amongst philosophers of the muddle-headedness they have taken over from common sense.
Bertrand Russell
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I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of WORK, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in the organised diminution of work.
Bertrand Russell
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Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.
Bertrand Russell
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Inferences of Science and Common Sense differ from those of deductive logic and mathematics in a very important respect, namely, when the premises are true and the reasoning correct, the conclusion is only probable.
Bertrand Russell
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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
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Zeno was concerned with three problems... These are the problem of the infinitesimal, the infinite, and continuity.
Bertrand Russell
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Shakespeare . . . If he does not give you delight, you had better ignore him [if you can].
Bertrand Russell
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It is obviously possible that what we call waking life may only be an unusual and persistent nightmare.
Bertrand Russell
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The Eugenic Society . . . is perpetually bewailing the fact that wage-earners breed faster than middle-class people.
Bertrand Russell
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Neither the Church nor modern public opinion condemns petting, provided it stops short at a certain point.
Bertrand Russell