Bertrand Russell Quotes

Rationality is not just something you do so that you can make more money, it is a binding principle. Rationality is a really good idea. You must avoid the nonsense that is conventional in one's own time. It requires developing systems of thought that improve your batting average over time.

The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion - in the long run, these are the only people who count.

Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.

It's against reason," said Filby. "What reason?" said the Time Traveller.

Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything.

To disparage the dictate of reason is equivalent to contemning the command of God.

Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.

People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.

The very essence of rationalism is that it assumes that the reason is the highest faculty in man and the lord of all the rest.

There are a lot of clear thinkers everywhere.

I possess a strong sense of reason.

When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths or to reject absurdities and palpable contradictions.

Our duty is to believe that for which we have sufficient evidence, and to suspend our judgment when we have not.

Mostly, I try to take a rational approach to life.

First, he must hold rational values, and to do this he must be a thinker.

... common sense is very rare.

The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not only the justest thinkers.

Everything is reason. If you don't have reason, you have nothing.

He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it.

Definitions are the foundation of reason. You can't reason without them.

Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation or the continuance of his species.

Rarest of all is the man who can and does reason at all times, quickly, accurately, inclusively, despite hope or fear or bodily distress, without egocentric bias or thalmic disturbance, with correct memory, with clear distinction between fact, assumption, and non-fact.

He had thought more than other men, and in matters of the intellect he had that calm objectivity, that certainty of thought and knowledge, such as only really intellectual men have, who have no axe to grind, who never wish to shine, or to talk others down, or to appear always in the right.

I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.

The world of reason is to be regarded as a great and immortal being, who ceaselessly works out what is necessary, and so makes himself lord also over what is accidental.