Quote

If a law were passed giving six months to every writer of a first book, only the good ones would do it.

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
Giving
Six
Every
Months
Good
Ones
Would
Writer
Law
Firsts
Book
First
Passed

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

Image
When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us.
Bertrand Russell
Image
You may, if you are an old-fashioned schoolmaster, wish to consider yourself full of universal benevolence and at the same time derive great pleasure from caning boys. In order to reconcile these two desires you have to persuade yourself that caning
Bertrand Russell
Image
If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full.
Bertrand Russell
Image
It is only theory that makes men completely incautious.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Some people would rather die than think.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Without civic morality communities perish without personal morality their survival has no value.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Calculus required continuity, and continuity was supposed to require the infinitely little but nobody could discover what the infinitely little might be.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
Bertrand Russell
Image
America... where law and custom alike are based upon the dreams of spinsters...
Bertrand Russell
Image
(on A History of Western Philosophy) I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if, indeed, such man exists.
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
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
... the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be.
Bertrand Russell
Image
There are three ways of securing a society that shall be stable as regards population. The first is that of birth control, the second that of infanticide or really destructive wars, and the third that of general misery except for a powerful minority.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we live.
Bertrand Russell
Image
... mathematical knowledge ... is, in fact, merely verbal knowledge. 3 means 2+1, and 4 means 3+1. Hence it follows (though the proof is long) that 4 means the same as 2+2. Thus mathematical knowledge ceases to be mysterious.
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