Bertrand Russell Quotes

I'm interested in people who have lived, who are searching and questioning.

It's human nature to wonder.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

I like the big questions.

Astonishment is the root of philosophy.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Philosophy is the product of wonder. The effort after the general characterization of the world around us is the romance of human thought.

The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder.

Why are there beings at all instead of nothing? That is the question. Presumably it is not arbitrary question, "Why are there beings at all instead of nothing"- this is obviously the first of all questions. Of course it is not the first question in the chronological sense [...] And yet, we are each touched once, maybe even every now and then, by the concealed power of this question, without properly grasping what is happening to us. In great despair, for example, when all weight tends to dwindle away from things and the sense of things grows dark, the question looms.

Said the monk: "All these mountains and rivers and the earth and stars - where do they come from?" Said the master: "Where does your question come from?"

I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.

One can do without solutions. Only the questions matter. We may share them or turn away from them.

Philosophy may be defined as the art of asking the right question...awareness of the problem outlives all solutions. The answers are questions in disguise, every new answer giving rise to new questions.

Therefore, even the lover of myth is a philosopher; for myth is composed of wonder.

For through wondering human beings now and in the beginning have been led to philosophizing.

Wonder is very important, because if we never wondered, we would never get to the point of asking questions. Yet wonder may lead people to write poetry or to paint pictures or to pray, as well as to ask the kinds of questions about the world and themselves that can be answered by science.

He explained to me with great insistence that every question posessed a power that did not lie in the answer.

It is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophize; wondering in the first place at obvious perplexities, and then by gradual progression raising questions about the greater matters too.

I was just wondering why you're here.

You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.

Wonder... and not any expectation of advantage from its discoveries, is the first principle which prompts mankind to the study of Philosophy, of that science which pretends to lay open the concealed connections that unite the various appearances of nature.

It's great to be in the position of asking questions and not having to answer questions.

My inspiration is really very simple: I'm struck by things that I want to know more about. I really do react just as a curious person: who is this person? What's the story behind this situation? Why do people like this or dislike this thing?

Born and nurtured when the human being first asked questions about the reason for things and their purpose, philosophy shows in different modes and forms that the desire for truth is part of human nature itself.

One of the main reasons for the existence of philosophy is not that it enables you to find truth (it can never do that) but that it does provide you a refuge for definitions.