Bertrand Russell Quotes on Knowledge
Russell's epistemological program from The Principles of Mathematics (1903) through Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948) sought to put empirical knowledge on a rigorous logical foundation. The early work in the philosophy of mathematics — culminating in Principia Mathematica with Whitehead — attempted to derive arithmetic from logic via the theory of types and the no-class theory. The middle period developed the analysis of knowledge into knowledge by acquaintance (with sense-data, universals, and one's own self) and knowledge by description (of physical objects and other minds). The late work returned to the inductive postulates required to bridge the gap between the directly given and the structure of the physical world that science describes.
Quotes
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“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 fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. -
Attributed to Bertrand Russell:
“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”
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“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”
What I Believe, 1925 -
“It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.”
Ch. 1: The Value of Scepticism -
Attributed to Bertrand Russell:
“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty.”
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“Science is what we know and philosophy is what we don't know.”
Unpopular Essays, 1950 -
“A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”
A History of Western Philosophy, 1945 -
“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinise it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it.”
Ch. VI: International relations, p. 97 -
“Greek Exercises (1888), written two days after his sixteenth birthday.”
I should like to believe my people's religion, which was just what I could wish, but alas, it is impossible. I have really no religion, for my God, being a spirit shown merely by reason to exist, his properties utterly unknown, is no help to my life. I have not the parson's comfortable doctrine that every good action has its reward, and every sin is forgiven. My whole religion is this: do every du -
“Thee will find out in time that I have a great love of professing vile sentiments, I don't know why, unless it springs from long efforts to avoid priggery.”
Letter to Alys Pearsall Smith (1894). Smith was a Quaker, thus the archaic use of "Thee" in this and other letters to her. -
“Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.”
Our Knowledge of the External World(1914) | p. 167 -
“The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilized men.”
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays(1918) | Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic -
“Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.”
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays(1918) | Ch. 5: Mathematics and the Metaphysicians -
“In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.”
Why I Am Not a Christian(1927) | "The Argument for the Remedying of Injustice" -
“If human nature were unchangeable, as ignorant people still suppose it to be, the situation would indeed be hopeless.”
Sceptical Essays(1928) | Ch. 17: Some Prospects: Cheerful and Otherwise -
“I do not think it possible to get anywhere if we start from scepticism. We must start from a broad acceptance of whatever seems to be knowledge and is not rejected for some specific reason.”
My Philosophical Development(1959) | p. 200 -
“Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.”
Our Knowledge of the External World(1914) | Lecture I, Current Tendencies, p. 11 (New American Library edition, 1960)