Quote

I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness.

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
Men
Machines
Think
Merely
Thinking
Eternal
Life
Consciousness
Unhappily
Quite
Endowed
Wish
Machine
Makes
Miserable
Kind
Believed

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

Image
Heretical views arise when the truth is uncertain, and it is only when the truth is uncertain that censorship is invoked.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition.
Bertrand Russell
Image
All the important human advances that we know of since historical times began have been due to individuals of whom the majority faced virulent public opposition.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business.
Bertrand Russell
Image
On the one hand, philosophy is to keep us thinking about things that we may come to know, and on the other hand to keep us modestly aware of how much that seems like knowledge isn't knowledge
Bertrand Russell
Image
Televison allows thousands of people to laugh at the same joke and still remain alone.
Bertrand Russell
Image
It seems to us unwise to have insisted on teaching geometry to the younger Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, in order to make him a good king, but from Plato's point of view it was essential. He was sufficiently Pythagorean to think that without mathematics no true wisdom is possible.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Hatred of enemies is easier and more intense than love of friends. But from men who are more anxious to injure opponents than to benefit the world at large no great good is to be expected.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Next to worry probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy.
Bertrand Russell
Image
To the primitive mind, everything is either friendly or hostile but experience has shown that friendliness and hostility are not the conceptions by which the world is to be understood.
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
A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The legacy of Greece to Western philosophy is Western philosophy.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The three main extra-rational activities in modern life are religion, war, and love. all these are extra-rational, but love is not anti-rational, that is to say, a reasonable man may reasonably rejoice in its existence
Bertrand Russell
Image
Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Americans need rest, but do not know it. I believe this to be a large part of the explanation of the crime wave in the United States.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Human life, its growth, its hopes, fears, loves, et cetera, are the result of accidents
Bertrand Russell
Image
If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
Bertrand Russell