Bertrand Russell

Life and writing

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) helped establish analytic philosophy and worked with Alfred North Whitehead on Principia Mathematica. Alongside technical problems in logic, he investigated what people can know and how ordinary language can conceal a misleading argument.

Russell also wrote for general readers about education, religion and politics. His public campaigning included opposition to war and nuclear weapons. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950; his varied writing cannot be reduced to a single collection of reassuring maxims.

Reading this voice

Read a short Russell quotation as an opening to an argument, not as its proof. Distinguish a passage about logical certainty from one offering practical or political judgement. The archive preserves attributed wording; this profile does not verify every attribution.

Subjects to explore

Words to begin with

• Secularists, who dismiss religion as simply false, and fundamentalists, who insist on literal truth, both miss the point. A revolt should be so unthinkable, as an organized insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton. Democracy is the even distribution of ultimate political power among all adults except lunatics, criminals and peers. When people think about democracy, they generally couple with it a considerable measure of liberty for individuals and groups. Unemployment, illness, and old age do not deserve punishment. No nation has ever shown more heroism than was shown by the Japanese, but they were defeated by American industrial productivity. The hope that human race will allow itself to survive, is therefore somewhat slender. Men will have to submit to the law, even when they think that the law is unjust and iniquitous. They were historical believes which, after being generally accepted for a long time, have in the end been admitted to be mistaken. All fanatical creeds do harm, they promote hatred and strife. Some people who say to love your neighbor, in fact think is right to hate people who do not do that. The attitude that believing or accepting a belief unquestionably on a basis of authority is contrary to the scientific spirit.
• Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it? Domestic animals expect food when they see the person who usually feeds them. We know independently of experiences. Absolute idea can describe the absolute reality. Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do. The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.