Igor > Igor's Quotes

“A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”
― Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays

“When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.”
― Bertrand Russell

“We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.”
― Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays

“No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.”
― Bertrand Russell, On Education: On Education

“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”
― Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”
― Bertrand Russell

“When considering marriage one should ask oneself this question; 'will I be able to talk with this person into old age?' Everything else is transitory, the most time is spent in conversation.”
― Bertrand Russell

“The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge”
― Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits

“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.”
― Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Science can teach us, and I think our hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supporters, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make the world a fit place to live.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world - its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and not be afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.”
― Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays

“There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attibutable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.”
― Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

“Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?”
― Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

“Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.”
― Bertrand Russell

“The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.”
― Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

“A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.”
― Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays

“William James describes a man who got the experience from laughing-gas; whenever he was under its influence, he knew the secret of the universe, but when he came to, he had forgotten it. At last, with immense effort, he wrote down the secret before the vision had faded. When completely recovered, he rushed to see what he had written. It was: "A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.”
― Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

“The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.”
― Bertrand Russell

“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
― Nikola Tesla

“We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically.”
― Neil DeGrasse Tyson

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.”
― Albert Einstein

“Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“Two obsessions are the hallmarks of Nature's artistic style:

Symmetry- a love of harmony, balance, and proportion

Economy- satisfaction in producing an abundance of effects from very limited means”
― Frank Wilczek, A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature's Deep Design

“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.”
― Sigmund Freud

“He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.”
― Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis