Bertrand Russell Quotes

It should now be clear why the method of Philosophy is so different from that of the natural sciences. Experiments are not made, because they would be utterly useless.

We have to make philosophy itself an object of philosophical concern.

There is no philosophy which is not founded upon knowledge of the phenomena, but to get any profit from this knowledge it is absolutely necessary to be a mathematician.

The first step towards philosophy is incredulity.

Logic is the last scientific ingredient of Philosophy; its extraction leaves behind only a confusion of non-scientific, pseudo problems.

Since philosophy now criticizes everything it comes across, a critique of philosophy would be nothing less than a just reprisal.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

That's something I learned as a philosophy major: The philosophy ethos is, always question, never rest.

History should be written as philosophy.

It is, I think, particularly in periods of acknowledged crisis that scientists have turned to philosophical analysis as a device for unlocking the riddles of their field. Scientists have not generally needed or wanted to be philosophers.

I would not say that I was, these days, a 'student' of philosophy, although in my youth I was quite deeply involved with certain aspects of the British pragmatists.

I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.

It is one of the consolations of philosophy that the benefit of showing how to dispense with a concept does not hinge on dispensing with it.

The word philosophy sounds high-minded, but it simply means the love of wisdom. If you love something, you don't just read about it; you hug it, you mess with it, you play with it, you argue with it.

The true function of philosophy is to educate us in the principles of reasoning and not to put an end to further reasoning by the introduction of fixed conclusions.

As a philosopher, I'm not obliged to explore every unknown wilderness.

A philosopher is, no doubt, entitled to examine even those distinctions that are to be found in the structure of all languages... in that case, such a distinction may be imputed to a vulgar error, which ought to be corrected in philosophy.

The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it.

Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental.

Let philosophy resolutely aim to be as scientific as possible, but let her not forget her strong kinship with literature.

The great benefit of philosophy, which is also its great weakness, is that all its steps are taken in the spirit of doubt.

That's one thing I learned in my philosophy training - if you're writing a paper on Aristotle, you have to first show that you understand him. Then you can make your counterargument.

Be attentive, feel nothing in vain, measure and compare: this is the whole law of philosophy.

Philosophy is problem-solving. There's a philosophical problem, and then you try to solve it by approaching it from different angles and seeing what way works. That's what comedy is: you have a topic and you try to just hit it as many different ways as you can.

Philosophy is explicitness, generality, orientation and assessment. That which one would insinuate, thereof one must speak.