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Those who in principle oppose birth control are either incapable of arithmetic or else in favour of war, pestilence and famine as permanent features of human life.

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
Either
Favour
War
Incapable
Else
Features
Human
Permanent
Humans
Principle
Pestilence
Life
Birth
Arithmetic
Principles
Famine
Control
Oppose

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The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.
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The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
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[Kant] was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed imjplicitly in the maximx that he had imbibed at his mother's knee.
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There was, I think, never any reason to believe in any innate superiority of the male, except his superior muscle.
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The human animal, like others, is adapted to a certain amount of struggle for life [and] the mere absence of effort from his life removes an essential ingredient of happiness. [. . .] He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
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Without civic morality communities perish without personal morality their survival has no value.
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Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?
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The late F. W. H. Myers used to tell how he asked a man at a dinner table what he thought would happen to him when he died. The man tried to ignore the question, but, on being pressed, replied: Oh well, I suppose I shall inherit eternal bliss, but I wish you wouldn't talk about such unpleasant subjects.
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The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.
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The solution of the difficulties which formerly surrounded the mathematical infinite is probably the greatest achievement of which our age has to boast.
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Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.
Bertrand Russell
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One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.
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Berkeley retains the merit of having shown that the existence of matter is capable of being denied without absurdity.
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Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business.
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Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.
Bertrand Russell
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Your writing is never as good as you hoped but never as bad as you feared.
Bertrand Russell
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But I simply can't stand a view limited to this earth, I feel life is so small unless it has windows into other worlds...I like mathematics largely because it is not human.
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I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.
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William James used to preach the will-to-believe. For my part, I should wish to preach the will-to-doubt. None of our beliefs are quite true all at least have a penumbra of vagueness and error. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
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Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.
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