Mind Quotes by Bertrand Russell

What is matter? Never mind.

— Bertrand Russell

The mind is a strange machine which can combine the materials offered to it in the most astonishing ways.

— Bertrand Russell

What is best in mathematics deserves not merely to be learnt as a task, but to assimilated as a part of daily…

— Bertrand Russell

Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.

— Bertrand Russell

To write tragedy, a man must feel tragedy. To feel tragedy, a man must be aware of the world in which he…

— Bertrand Russell

The first effect of emancipation from the Church was not to make men think rationally, but to open their minds to every…

— Bertrand Russell

I think it would be just to say the most essential characteristic of mind is memory, using this word in its broadest…

— Bertrand Russell

“Liberation from the tyranny of the body contributes to greatness, but just as much to greatness in sin as to greatness in…

— Bertrand Russell

To a mind of sufficient intellectual power, the whole of mathematics would appear trivial, as trivial as the statement that a four-footed…

— Bertrand Russell

To the primitive mind, everything is either friendly or hostile; but experience has shown that friendliness and hostility are not the conceptions…

— Bertrand Russell

A man who has once perceived, however temporarily and however briefly, what makes greatness of soul, can no longer be happy if…

— Bertrand Russell

The most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition. The experimental habit of mind is…

— Bertrand Russell

Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in…

— Bertrand Russell

As I grew up I became increasingly interested in philosophy, or which [his family] profoundly disapproved. Everytime the subject came up they…

— Bertrand Russell

Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may…

— Bertrand Russell

The world that I should wish to see would be one freed from the virulence of group hostilities and capable of realizing…

— Bertrand Russell

If you think your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument rather than by persecution, and will abandon…

— Bertrand Russell

A logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about…

— Bertrand Russell

There is a possibility in human minds of something mysterious as the night-wind, deep as the sea, calm as the stars, and…

— Bertrand Russell

Almost all education has a political motive: it aims at strengthening some group, national or religious or even social, in the competition…

— Bertrand Russell

Philosophy, for Plato, is a kind of vision, the 'vision of truth'...Everyone who has done any kind of creative work has experienced,…

— Bertrand Russell

He will see himself and life and the world as truly as our human limitations will permit; realizing the brevity and minuteness…

— Bertrand Russell

We are ... led to a somewhat vague distinction between what we may call "hard" data and "soft" data. This distinction is…

— Bertrand Russell

The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interests of the desire to know-it involves…

— Bertrand Russell

Every isolated passion, is, in isolation, insane; sanity may be defined as synthesis of insanities. Every dominant passion generates a dominant fear,…

— Bertrand Russell

Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as…

— Bertrand Russell

Through the greatness of the universe, which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with…

— Bertrand Russell

Fervent religious believers sacrifice pleasures of the body, but instead enjoy pleasures of the mind, including the joy of knowing that those…

— Bertrand Russell

“When two things have frequently existed in close temporal contiguity, either comes in time to cause the other.”

— Bertrand Russell

“Travelling, whether in the mental or the physical world, is a joy, and it is good to know that, in the mental…

— Bertrand Russell

The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interest of the desire to know.

— Bertrand Russell

To a modern mind, it is difficult to feel enthusiastic about a virtuous life if nothing is going to be achieved by…

— Bertrand Russell

I don't care for the applause one gets by saying what others are thinking; I want actually to change people's thoughts. Power…

— Bertrand Russell

I mean by intellectual integrity the habit of deciding vexed questions in accordance with the evidence, or of leaving them undecided where…

— Bertrand Russell

He will see himself and life and the world as truly as our human limitations will permit; realizing the brevity and minuteness…

— Bertrand Russell

In attempting to understand the elements out of which mental phenomena are compounded, it is of the greatest importance to remember that…

— Bertrand Russell

Education, and the life of the mind generally, is a matter in which individual initiative is the chief thing needed; the function…

— Bertrand Russell

“In a world where there were no specifically mental facts, is it not plain that there would be a complete impartiality, an…

— Bertrand Russell

The difference between mind and brain is not a difference of quality, but a difference of arrangement. It is like the difference…

— Bertrand Russell

“It is one of the defects of modern higher education that it has become too much a training in the acquisition of…

— Bertrand Russell