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When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us.

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
Effects
Seeing
Upon
Look
Looks
Effect
Rock
Rocks

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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An Honest politician will not be tolerated by a democracy unless he is very stupid ... because only a very stupid man can honestly share the prejudices of more than half the nation.
Bertrand Russell
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I have come to realize that an early symptom of approaching mental illness is the belief that one's work is terribly important. If you consider your work very important you should take a day off.
Bertrand Russell
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Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.
Bertrand Russell
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If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.
Bertrand Russell
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Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
Bertrand Russell
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Any pleasure that does no harm to other people is to be valued.
Bertrand Russell
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I used, when I was younger, to take my holidays walking. I would cover 25 miles a day, and when the evening came I had no need of anything to keep me from boredom, since the delight of sitting amply sufficed.
Bertrand Russell
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The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.
Bertrand Russell
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When the journey from means to end is not too long, the means themselves are enjoyed if the end is ardently desired.
Bertrand Russell
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Meantime, the world in which we exist has other aims. But it will pass away, burnt up in the fire of its own hot passions and from its ashes will spring a new and younger world, full of fresh hope, woth the light of morning in its eyes.
Bertrand Russell
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Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.
Bertrand Russell
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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
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Human life, its growth, its hopes, fears, loves, et cetera, are the result of accidents
Bertrand Russell
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The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. If you take your children for a picnic on a doubtful day, they will demand a dogmatic answer as to whether it will be fine or wet, and be disappointed in you when you cannot be sure.
Bertrand Russell
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To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
Bertrand Russell
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The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.
Bertrand Russell
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Is a man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water crawling impotently on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is he perhaps both as once?
Bertrand Russell
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Folly is perennial and yet the human race has survived.
Bertrand Russell
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The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.
Bertrand Russell
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Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a long period, as, for example, ancient Egypt persisted, or does it necessarily contain within itself forces which must bring either decay or explosion?
Bertrand Russell