Quote

The supreme maxim in scientific philosophising is this: wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities.

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
Maxims
Entity
Construction
Logical
Inferred
Wherever
Constructions
Scientific
Substituted
Supreme
Maxim
Possible
Entities

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

Image
In his youth, Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry and had a natural daughter. At this period, he was a bad man. Then he became good, abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles and wrote bad poetry.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that is happiness.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The man who pursues happiness wisely will aim at the possession of a number of subsidiary interests in addition to those central ones upon which his life is built.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Science, by itself cannot, supply us with an ethic.
Bertrand Russell
Image
When we perceive any object of a familiar kind, much of what appears subjectively to be immediately given is really derived from past experience.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Man is a rational animal – so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favour of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Perhaps the nuclear physicists have come so near to the ultimate secrets that He thinks it time to bring their activities to a stop. And what simpler method could He devise than to let them carry their ingenuity to the point where they exterminate the human race?
Bertrand Russell
Image
There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire - poison and antidote.
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
What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.
Bertrand Russell
Image
I feel life is so small unless it has windows into other worlds.
Bertrand Russell
Image
I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.
Bertrand Russell
Image
America... where law and custom alike are based upon the dreams of spinsters...
Bertrand Russell
Image
There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell
Image
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
Bertrand Russell
Image
A world without delight and without affection is a world destitute of value.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Force plays a much larger part in the government of the world than it did before 1914, and what is especially alarming, force tends increasingly to fall into the hands of those who are enemies of civilization.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Public opinion is always more tyrannical towards those who obviously fear it than towards those who feel indifferent to it.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake.
Bertrand Russell