Bertrand Russell Quotes

Mathematics is the bold luxury of pure reason, one of the few that remain today.

The universe can best be pictured as consisting of pure thought, the thought of what for want of a better word we must describe as a mathematical thinker.

It was not so much that I was doing mathematics, but rather that mathematics had taken possession of me.

... mathematics is the science of skillful operations with concepts and rules invented just for this purpose.

Wherefore did he [God] create passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly tempered are the very ingredients of virtue?

In many cases, mathematics is an escape from reality. The mathematician finds his own monastic niche and happiness in pursuits that are disconnected from external affairs. Some practice it as if using a drug.

The object of pure Mathematic (is) that of unfolding the laws of human intelligence.

Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.

I was very focused, driven, rigid, work-oriented. I didn't care about having a family or making a home. I didn't think about kids. It's not that I didn't want those things, I just didn't think about them. And then I had someone who came in as a tornado, this creative, beautiful ball of insane energy and passion. And it completely opened me up.

From the beginning, I've stressed that home is something internal, invisible, portable, especially for those of us with roots in many physical places; we have to root ourselves in our passions, our values and our deepest friends. My home, I've always felt, lies in the songs and novels that I love, in the wife and mother that I'm never far away from, in the monastery to which I've been returning for 25 years.

But the creative principle resides in mathematics. In a certain sense, therefore, I hold true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed.

How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

Thinking. This book contains some. Whether you try it at home is up to you.

We alter and customize the thing every century, every generation, every day - both in the courts and in our own homes. And marriage accepts our modifications gracefully. Marriage adapts, evolves and (in a manner that I find miraculous and kind of inspiring) somehow keeps chugging along.

Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.

The mind serves to know the truth that fuels the fires of the heart.

Axiomatization is what one does last, it's rubbish. It's the hygiene of mathematics, axiomatization.

One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and He used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.

The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.

Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret room Piled high with cases in my father’s name; Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there At this or that box, pulling through the gap, In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, The first book first. And how I felt it beat Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark, An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!

The love of study, a passion which derives fresh vigor from enjoyment, supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual source of independent and rational pleasure.

Sometimes I would go home from work and just stare at the wall for a couple of hours. But, I can't complain. Whatever knocks you out working is the kind of work that I want to be doing because it's always those challenges that are the most exciting, and the things I hope to get to keep doing in my work.

Lust is the cause of generation.

The passion for playing Chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world

A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.