Man is a rational animalโso at least I have been told. โฆ Aristotle, so far as I know, was the first man to proclaim explicitly that man is a rational animal. His reason for this view was โฆ that some people can do sums. โฆ It is in virtue of the intellect that man is a rational animal. The intellect is shown in various ways, but most emphatically by mastery of arithmetic. The Greek system of numerals was very bad, so that the multiplication table was quite difficult, and complicated calculations could only be made by very clever people.
Bertrand RussellYou may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.
Bertrand RussellWithout civic morality communities perish; without personal morality their survival has no value.
Bertrand RussellNo Carthaginian denied Moloch, because to do so would have required more courage that was required to face death in battle.
Bertrand RussellFor some reason which I have failed to understand, many people like the system [scientific totalitarianism] when it is Russian but disliked the very same system when it was German. I am compelled to think that this is due to the power of labels; these people like whatever is labelled โLeftโ without examining whether the label has any justification.
Bertrand Russell