If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation do you prefer the grain to the vote?
Bertrand RussellPhysics, owing to the simplicity of its subject matter, has reached a higher state of development than any other science.
Bertrand RussellMathematics, 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 georgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. 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 in poetry.
Bertrand RussellIf a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full.
Bertrand RussellIf an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. [...] The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.
Bertrand Russell