Quote

Calculus required continuity, and continuity was supposed to require the infinitely little but nobody could discover what the infinitely little might be.

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
Math
Discover
Calculus
Mathematics
Continuity
Supposed
Infinitely
Nobody
Statistics
Littles
Required
Little
Require
Might
Mathematical

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

Image
Broadly speaking, Protestants like to be good and have invented theology in order to keep themselves so, whereas Catholics like to be bad and have invented theology in order to keep their neighbors good. Hence, the social character of Catholicism and the individual character of Protestantism.
Bertrand Russell
Image
What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Aristotle and Plato considered Greeks so innately superior to barbarians that slavery is justified so long as the master is Greek and the slave barbarian.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Change is one thing, progress is another.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason. Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Our individual life is brief, and perhaps the whole life of mankind will be brief if measured in astronomical scale
Bertrand Russell
Image
When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.
Bertrand Russell
Image
From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization of Islam flourished. What was lost to christendom at this time was not lost to civilization, but quite the contrary.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Dread of disaster makes everybody act in the very way that increases the disaster. Psychologically the situation is analogous to that of people trampled to death when there is a panic in a theatre caused by a cry of `Fire!'.
Bertrand Russell
Image
I went to Salt Lake City and the Mormons tried to convert me, but when I found they forbade tea and tobacco I thought it was no religion for me.
Bertrand Russell
Image
I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Choose your parents wisely.
Bertrand Russell
Image
To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Is the set of all sets which are not members of themselves a member of itself?
Bertrand Russell
Image
War...seems a mere madness, a collective insanity.
Bertrand Russell
Image
I must, before I die, find some way to say the essential thing that is in me, that I have never said yet -- a thing that is not love or hate or pity or scorn, but the very breath of life, fierce and coming from far away, bringing into human life the vastness and the fearful passionless force of non-human things.
Bertrand Russell
Image
It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.
Bertrand Russell