E.S. Russell Quotes

Much of the most important evils that mankind have to consider are those which they inflict upon each other through stupidity or malevolence or both.

Ideas and principles that do harm are as a rule, though not always, cloaks for evil passions.

All the conditions of happiness are realized in the life of the man of science.

Every living thing is a sort of imperialist, seeking to transform as much as possible of its environment into itself.

Uncertainty in the pressure of vivid hopes and fears is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.

Bad philosophers may have a certain influence; good philosophers, never.

To expect a personality to survive the disintegration of the brain is like expecting a cricket club to survive when all of its members are dead.

Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God.

Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau.

You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.

Great God in Boots! – the ontological argument is sound!

The first essential character [of civilization], I should say, is forethought. This, indeed, is what mainly distinguishes men from brutes and adults from children.

Zeno was concerned with three problems... These are the problem of the infinitesimal, the infinite, and continuity.

I am delighted to know that Principia Mathematica can now be done by machinery. . . I am quite willing to believe that anything in deductive logic can be done by machinery.

For a good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times make it seem almost like a live teacher.

At first it seems obvious, but the more you think about it the stranger the deductions from this axiom seem to become; in the end you cease to understand what is meant by it.

The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty.

It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know-or care-about circumstances in the colonies.

The solution of the difficulties which formerly surrounded the mathematical infinite is probably the greatest achievement of which our age has to boast.

Whether science-and indeed civilization in general-can long survive depends upon psychology, that is to say, it depends upon what human beings desire.

We believe, first and foremost, what makes us feel that we are fine fellows.

It is only theory that makes men completely incautious.

One's work is never so bad as it appears on bad days, nor so good as it appears on good days.

... the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be.

Religion and Science are two aspects of social life, of which the former has been important as far back as we know anything of man

Undoubtedly the desire for food has been and still is one of the main causes of political events.

It is impossible to read in America, except on a train, because of the telephone. Everyone has a telephone, and it rings all day and most of the night.

The military superiority of Europe to Asia is not an eternal law of nature, as we are tempted to think, and our superiority in civilization is a mere delusion.

In our complex world, there cannot be fruitful initiative without government, but unfortunately there can be government without initiative.

One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.

When I found myself regarded as respectable, I began to wonder what sins I had committed. I must be very wicked, I thought. I began to engage in the most uncomfortable introspection.

No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.

The camera is as subjective as we are.

The atomists , unlike Socrates , Plato , and Aristotle , sought to explain the world without introducing the notion of purpose or final cause.

Every increase in knowledge requires an increase in wisdom

I feel as if one would only discover on one's death bed what one ought to have lived for

The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.

The saviors of the world, society's last hope.

One of the troubles about vanity is that it grows with what it feeds on. The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about.

Dora and I are now married, but just as happy as we were before.

Our beliefs are, however, often contrary to fact.

I cannot escape from the conclusion that the great ages of progress have depended upon a small number of individuals of transcendent ability.

Democracy has at least one merit, namely that a Member of Parliament cannot be stupider than his constituents, for the more stupid he is, the more stupid they were to elect him.

We need a science to save us from science.

It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.

Berkeley retains the merit of having shown that the existence of matter is capable of being denied without absurdity.

[Kant] was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed imjplicitly in the maximx that he had imbibed at his mother's knee.

We shall say that we have acquaintance with anything of which we are directly aware, without the intermediary of any process of inference of any knowledge of truths.

Calculating machines do sums better than even the cleverest people… As arithmetic has grown easier, it has come to be less respected.

Morally, a philosopher who uses his professional competence for anything except a disinterested search for truth is guilty of a kind of treachery.