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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

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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
Kind
Perceive
Really
Familiar
Object
Objects
Experience
Subjectively
Given
Derived
Past
Appears
Much
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More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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It is the things for which there is no evidence that are believed with passion.
Bertrand Russell
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For some reason which I have failed to understand, many people like the system [scientific totalitarianism] when it is Russian but disliked the very same system when it was German. I am compelled to think that this is due to the power of labels these people like whatever is labelled ‘Left’ without examining whether the label has any justification.
Bertrand Russell
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There are infinite possibilities of error, and more cranks take up fashionable untruths than unfashionable truths.
Bertrand Russell
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The Axiom of Choice is necessary to select a set from an infinite number of socks, but not an infinite number of shoes.
Bertrand Russell
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I feel as if one would only discover on one's death bed what one ought to have lived for
Bertrand Russell
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European travellers find the Japanese a smiling race.
Bertrand Russell
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Televison allows thousands of people to laugh at the same joke and still remain alone.
Bertrand Russell
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God and Satan alike are essentially human figures, the one a projection of ourselves, the other of our enemies.
Bertrand Russell
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Only in thought is man a God in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.
Bertrand Russell
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Life and hope for the world are to be found only in the deeds of love.
Bertrand Russell
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Collective wisdom, alas, is no adequate substitute for the intelligence of individuals. Individuals who opposed received opinions have been the source of all progress, both moral and intellectual. They have been unpopular, as was natural.
Bertrand Russell
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Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is based on the idea of approximation. If a man tells you he knows a thing exactly, then you can be safe in inferring that you are speaking to an inexact man.
Bertrand Russell
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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
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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
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The solution of the difficulties which formerly surrounded the mathematical infinite is probably the greatest achievement of which our age has to boast.
Bertrand Russell
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In attempting to understand the elements out of which mental phenomena are compounded, it is of the greatest importance to remember that from the protozoa to man there is nowhere a very wide gap either in structure or in behaviour. From this fact it is a highly probable inference that there is also nowhere a very wide mental gap.
Bertrand Russell
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For over two thousand years it has been the custom among earnest moralists to decry happiness as something degraded and unworthy
Bertrand Russell
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The luxury to disparage freedom is the privilege of those who already possess it.
Bertrand Russell
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The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.
Bertrand Russell
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The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as a training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely utilitarian point of view as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom.
Bertrand Russell