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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

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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
Thinking
History
Mathematics
Sufficiently
True
Kings
Geometry
Order
View
Plato
Seems
Teaching
Tyrants
Pythagorean
Without
Views
Younger
Syracuse
Make
Wisdom
Essential
Unwise
Good
Possible
King
Insisted
Think
Point
Essentials
Tyrant

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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Joy of life... depends upon a certain spontaneity in regard to sex. Where sex is repressed, only work remains, and a gospel of work for work's sake never produced any work worth doing.
Bertrand Russell
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Through the greatness of the universe, which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.
Bertrand Russell
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Philosophy bakes no bread
Bertrand Russell
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My own belief is that in most ages and in most places obscure psychological forces led men to adopt systems involving quite unnecessary cruelty, and that this is still the case among the most civilized races at the present day.
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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.
Bertrand Russell
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Every living thing is a sort of imperialist, seeking to transform as much as possible of its environment into itself . . . When we compare the (present) human population of the globe with . . . that of former times, we see that chemical imperialism has been . . . the main end to which human intelligence has been devoted.
Bertrand Russell
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A life which goes excessively against natural impulse is... likely to involve effects of strain that may be quite as bad as indulgence in forbidden impulses would have been. People who live a life which is unnatural beyond a point are likely to be filled with envy, malice and uncharitableness.
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Next to worry probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy.
Bertrand Russell
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Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.
Bertrand Russell
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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
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A man's acts are partly determined by spontaneous impulse, partly by the conscious and unconscious effects of the various groups to which he belongs.
Bertrand Russell
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All the conditions of happiness are realized in the life of the man of science.
Bertrand Russell
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When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.
Bertrand Russell
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The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so at other times he thinks about other things, or, if it is night, about nothing at all.
Bertrand Russell
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Beggars do not envy millionaires, though of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful.
Bertrand Russell
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There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
Bertrand Russell
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One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his or her work important.
Bertrand Russell
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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
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There is darkness without and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, nor vastness anywhere only triviality for a moment and then nothing.
Bertrand Russell
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No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.
Bertrand Russell