Bertrand Russell
Full Name: Bertrand Arthur William Russell
Birthdate: May 18, 1872
Birthplace: Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire, Wales, United Kingdom
Date of Death: February 2, 1970
Occupation: Historian, Pacifist, Philosopher, and Social Critic
Profile: Awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature. Co-authored
Principia Mathematica with
Alfred North Whitehead.
Website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell
Number of Quotes: 10
I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied:
The
bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.
In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.
In former days, men sold themselves to the devil to acquire magical powers. Nowadays they acquire those powers from science, and find
themselves compelled to become devils. There is no hope for the world unless power can be tamed, and brought into the service, not of this
or that group of fanatical tyrants, but of the whole human race ... for science has made it inevitable that all must live or all must die.
It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.
The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
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.
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.
War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter;
second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid, the second is pleasant and highly paid.
Last on Earth
