Quote

At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love. I had not imagined there was anything so delicious in the world. From that moment until I was thirty-eight, mathematics was my chief interest and my chief source of happiness.

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
World
Moment
Eight
Imagined
Moments
Brother
Chief
Anything
Source
Chiefs
Firsts
Events
Mathematical
Euclid
First
Imagination
Math
Tutor
Great
Age
Thirty
Dazzling
Love
Interest
Began
Eleven
Life
Happiness
Mathematics
Delicious

More quotes by 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
The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful therefore the worse they are performed, the better.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Reason may be a small force, but it is constant, and works always in one direction, while the forces of unreason destroy one another in futile strife.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.
Bertrand Russell
Image
[Regarding] the convention that clergymen are more virtuous than other men. Any average selection of mankind, set apart and told that it excels the rest in virtue, must tend to sink below the average.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Protagoras did not know if the gods exist, but he held in any case they ought to be worshiped. Philosophy, according to him, had nothing edifying to teach, and for the survival of morals we must rely upon the thoughtlessness of the majority and their willingness to believe what they had been taught.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Plato has dramatic strength ... but is quite unaware of the strength of the argument against his position ... and allows himself to be grossly unfair in arguing against it.
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
Do not feel certain of anything.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
Bertrand Russell
Image
It is the things for which there is no evidence that are believed with passion.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.
Bertrand Russell
Image
No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor, but honest.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
Bertrand Russell
Image
There was, I think, never any reason to believe in any innate superiority of the male, except his superior muscle.
Bertrand Russell
Image
If the State does not acquire supremacy over [vast private] enterprises, it becomes their puppet, and they become the real State.
Bertrand Russell
Image
There is darkness without and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, nor vastness anywhere only triviality for a moment and then nothing.
Bertrand Russell
Image
There is an element of the busybody in our conception of virtue: unless a man makes himself a nuisance to a great many people, we do not think he can be an exceptionally good man.
Bertrand Russell