Quote

My own view on religion is . . . It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and . . . to chronicle eclipses . . . These two services I am prepared to acknowledge.

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
Two
Helped
Acknowledge
Eclipses
Prepared
Chronicle
Early
Chronicles
View
Calendar
Views
Calendars
Days
Eclipse
Religion
Services

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

Image
What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
Bertrand Russell
Image
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Patriotism which has the quality of intoxication is a danger not only to its native land but to the world, and My country never wrong is an even more dangerous maxim than My country, right or wrong.
Bertrand Russell
Image
[Kant] was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed imjplicitly in the maximx that he had imbibed at his mother's knee.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The late F. W. H. Myers used to tell how he asked a man at a dinner table what he thought would happen to him when he died. The man tried to ignore the question, but, on being pressed, replied: Oh well, I suppose I shall inherit eternal bliss, but I wish you wouldn't talk about such unpleasant subjects.
Bertrand Russell
Image
All serious innovation is only rendered possible by some accident enabling unpopular persons to survive.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Dr. Arnold . . . the admired reformer of public schools, came across some cranks who thought it a mistake to flog boys. Anyone reading his outburst of furious indignation against this opinion will be forced to the conclusion that he enjoyed inflicting floggings.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The use of force stands in need of control by a public neutral authority, in the interests of liberty no less than of justice. Within a nation, this public authority will naturally be the state in relations between nations, if the present anarchy is to cease, it will have to be some international parliament.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Choose your parents wisely.
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
Education, and the life of the mind generally, is a matter in which individual initiative is the chief thing needed the function of the state should begin and end with insistence on some kind of education, and, if possible, a kind which promotes mental individualism, not a kind which happens to conform to the prejudices of government officials.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Curious learning not only makes unpleasant things less unpleasant but also makes pleasant things more pleasant.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Bad philosophers may have a certain influence good philosophers, never.
Bertrand Russell
Image
No satisfaction based upon self-deception is solid.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The twin conceptions of sin and vindictive punishment seem to be at the root of much that is most vigorous, both in religion and politics.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Cruelty is, in theory, a perfectly adequate ground for divorce, but it may be interpreted so as to become absurd.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young the other tenth is physiological, and will occur in one way or another whatever the state of the law may be.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Our individual life is brief, and perhaps the whole life of mankind will be brief if measured in astronomical scale
Bertrand Russell