Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Is a man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water crawling impotently on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is he perhaps both as once?
Bertrand Russell
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Tiny
Lump
Planet
Astronomers
Planets
Hamlet
Perhaps
Lumps
Small
Crawling
Water
Unimportant
Seems
Carbon
Astronomer
Men
Appears
Impure
More quotes by Bertrand Russell
For over two thousand years it has been the custom among earnest moralists to decry happiness as something degraded and unworthy
Bertrand Russell
I used often to go to America during Prohibition, and there was far more drunkenness there then than before the prohibition of pornography has much the same effect.
Bertrand Russell
The secrets to happiness include enterprise, exploration of one's interests and the overcoming of obstacles.
Bertrand Russell
Even if we could be certain that one of the world's religions were perfectly true, given the sheer number of conflicting faiths on offer, every believer should expect damnation purely as a matter of probability.
Bertrand Russell
Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence, no matter what orthodoxy it may be.
Bertrand Russell
Abstract work, if one wishes to do it well, must be allowed to destroy one's humanity one raises a monument which is at the same time a tomb, in which, voluntarily, one slowly inters oneself.
Bertrand Russell
Americans need rest, but do not know it. I believe this to be a large part of the explanation of the crime wave in the United States.
Bertrand Russell
Another merit of home is that it preserves the diversity between individuals. If we were all alike, it might be convenient for the bureaucrat and the statistician, but it would be very dull, and would lead to a very unprogressive society.
Bertrand Russell
The time has come, or is about to come, when only large-scale civil disobedience, which should be nonviolent, can save the populations from the universal death which their governments are preparing for them.
Bertrand Russell
The solution of the difficulties which formerly surrounded the mathematical infinite is probably the greatest achievement of which our age has to boast.
Bertrand Russell
A million million years gives us some time to prepare for the end . . . let us make the best of it.
Bertrand Russell
The Eugenic Society . . . is perpetually bewailing the fact that wage-earners breed faster than middle-class people.
Bertrand Russell
The twin conceptions of sin and vindictive punishment seem to be at the root of much that is most vigorous, both in religion and politics.
Bertrand Russell
Beggars do not envy millionaires, though of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful.
Bertrand Russell
If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.
Bertrand Russell
Affection cannot be created it can only be liberated.
Bertrand Russell
The evolution of our spirit is blazed on the dark background of eternity by our individual wakes. Every person can, if he/she wishes, leave a more or less brilliant wake behind them.
Bertrand Russell
Boys and young men acquire readily the moral sentiments of their social milieu, whatever these sentiments may be.
Bertrand Russell
Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.
Bertrand Russell
All serious innovation is only rendered possible by some accident enabling unpopular persons to survive.
Bertrand Russell