Few people have said so much wisdom in such acute words as Bertrand Russell. I met his work when I was a teen; it undoubtedly shaped my life, quite likely in ways that I even now can only partly recognize. Food for your thoughts today —
Quotations by Bertrand Russell
Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.
Quoted in W H Auden and L Kronenberger,
The Viking Book of Aphorisms (1966).
If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.
The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell .
Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing what physics really asserts, since the words of everyday life are not sufficiently abstract. Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.
The Scientific Outlook, 1931.
At first it seems obvious, but the more you think about it the stranger the deductions from this axiom seem to become; in the end you cease to understand what is meant by it.
Quoted in N Rose
Mathematical Maxims and Minims (Raleigh N C 1988).
Calculus required continuity, and continuity was supposed to require the infinitely little; but nobody could discover what the infinitely little might be.
Quoted in N Rose
Mathematical Maxims and Minims (Raleigh N C 1988).
The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.
Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, 1919, p 71.
Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.
The Impact of Science on Society, 1952.
I wanted certainty in the kind of way in which people want religious faith. I thought that certainty is more likely to be found in mathematics than elsewhere. But I discovered that many mathematical demonstrations, which my teachers expected me to accept, were full of fallacies, and that, if certainty were indeed discoverable in mathematics, it would be in a new field of mathematics, with more solid foundations than those that had hitherto been thought secure. But as the work proceeded, I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was no more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.
Portraits from Memory.
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
Quoted in Des MacHale, Wisdom (London, 2002).
No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
Quoted in Des MacHale, Wisdom (London, 2002).
Have I missed some of your favorite Russell quotes? Please share!