Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Philosophers
Bertrand Russell
Born in Britain in 1872 into the aristocratic Russell family, Bertrand Russell was a philosopher, logician, and mathematician. In the monumental Principia Mathematica, co-authored with Whitehead, he attempted to ground all of mathematics in logic and became one of the founders of analytic philosophy. Russell's Paradox revolutionized set theory; he advanced logical atomism as a philosophical method. He was also a committed anti-war and nuclear-disarmament activist. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 and sustained his intellectual combat until his death at 97.
View this figure's profile
Bertrand Russell's Other Quotes
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.
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.
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
Related Quotes
Exile is not an evil.
-- Gaius Musonius Rufus
Cato, while he lived, lived in such a way that he lacked nothing — so long as he was free to die.
-- Cato the Younger
If I were not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes.
-- Diogenes of Sinope
Stand a little out of my sunlight.
-- Diogenes of Sinope
What frees you from slavery is not wealth but needing nothing.
-- Crates of Thebes
In the northern darkness there is a fish called Kun. The Kun is so vast one cannot tell how many thousands of li it spans. It transforms into a bird called Peng. The back of the Peng is so vast one cannot tell how many thousands of li it spans.
-- Zhuang Zhou