The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.
Meaning of the quote
Understanding the world through philosophy is not very important for animals, primitive people, or even most people in civilized societies. Animals and primitive people are more focused on practical things like finding food and staying safe. Most people in cities and towns are also more concerned with everyday life rather than deep, theoretical understanding of the world.
About Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell was a renowned British philosopher, mathematician, and logician who made significant contributions to various fields, including mathematics, logic, and analytic philosophy. He was a pacifist, anti-imperialist, and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature for his humanitarian ideals and championing of free thought.
More quotes from Bertrand Russell
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable, and praised when they are not praiseworthy.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Liberty is the right to do what I like; license, the right to do what you like.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Sin is geographical.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Boredom is… a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people’s happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Anything you’re good at contributes to happiness.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Drunkenness is temporary suicide.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
With the introduction of agriculture mankind entered upon a long period of meanness, misery, and madness, from which they are only now being freed by the beneficent operation of the machine.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and start From the slightest pain or equal foe.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
War does not determine who is right – only who is left.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives’ mouths.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza’s God, it won’t love us in return.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
All movements go too far.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
I’ve made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)
The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.
British philosopher and logician (1872-1970)