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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.

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
Scientific
Technique
Pursuit
Knowledge
Power
Love
Actuated
Think
Advances
Thinking
Mainly

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Respectability, regularity, and routine - the whole cast-iron discipline of a modern industrial society - have atrophied the artistic impulse, and imprisoned love so that it can no longer be generous and free and creative, but must be either stuffy or furtive.
Bertrand Russell
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Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.
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There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literature or great philosophy they will not be able to discover the secret springs of happiness in the human heart they will know nothing of love and friendship.
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Cruel men believe in a cruel god and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly god, and they would be kindly in any case.
Bertrand Russell
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Envy ... is one form of a vice, partly moral, partly intellectual, which consists in seeing things never in themselves but only in their relations.
Bertrand Russell
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We have almost reached the point where praise of rationality is held to mark a man as an old fogey regrettably surviving from a bygone age.
Bertrand Russell
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A priori Logical propositions are such as can be known a priori without study of the actual world.
Bertrand Russell
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The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as a training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely utilitarian point of view as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom.
Bertrand Russell
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The skill of the politician consists in guessing what people can be brought to think advantageous to themselves the skill of the expert consists in calculating what really is advantageous, provided people can be brought to think so.
Bertrand Russell
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Why repeat the old errors, if there are so many new errors to commit?
Bertrand Russell
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If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.
Bertrand Russell
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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War...seems a mere madness, a collective insanity.
Bertrand Russell
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Whether science-and indeed civilization in general-can long survive depends upon psychology, that is to say, it depends upon what human beings desire.
Bertrand Russell
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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?
Bertrand Russell
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dont let the old break you let the love make you
Bertrand Russell
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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
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How about Pithecanthropus Erectus? Was it really he who ate the apple? Or was it Homo Pekiniensis?
Bertrand Russell
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It is only theory that makes men completely incautious.
Bertrand Russell
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In attempting to understand the elements out of which mental phenomena are compounded, it is of the greatest importance to remember that from the protozoa to man there is nowhere a very wide gap either in structure or in behaviour. From this fact it is a highly probable inference that there is also nowhere a very wide mental gap.
Bertrand Russell