We can destroy animals more easily than they can destroy us; that is the only solid basis of our claim to superiority. We value art and science and literature, because these are things in which we excel. But whales might value spouting, and donkey might maintain that a good bray is more exquisite than the music of Bach. We cannot prove them wrong except by the exercise of arbitrary power. All ethical systems, in the last analysis, depend upon weapons of war.
en
Supériorité de l'espèce humaine basée sur le pouvoir arbitraire (1931-33)
Bertrand Russell:
582
citations
1
J'aime
Bertrand Russell citations célèbres
Histoire de mes idées philosophiques (1961)
“Une chose est ce qu’elle est, et pas autre chose.”
De l’Évèque Joseph Butler : Everything is what it is, and not another thing.
en
Autres publications
extrait de autobiographie
Principes de reconstruction sociale (1924)
Source: Principes de reconstruction social http://books.google.fr/books?id=V2sUmFK3LqwC&pg=PA1, Bertrand Russell, revue et corrigé par Normand Baillargeon , introduction.
Principes de reconstruction sociale (1924)
Bertrand Russell Citations
“Si nous n'avions pas peur de la mort, je ne crois pas que serait jamais née l'idée d'immortalité.”
Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Pourquoi je ne suis pas un chrétien (1957)
Principes de reconstruction sociale (1924)
Réponse de Bertrand Russell à Ludwig Wittgenstein, en 1921, alors qu’il se trouve à Pekin.
Correspondance
Histoire de mes idées philosophiques (1961)
Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and purification, 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.
en
La méthode scientifique en philosophie (1914)
In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays
Bertrand Russell: Citations en anglais
“Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.”
1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 8: Eastern and Western Ideals of Happiness
“Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.”
1940s, A History of Western Philosophy (1945)
“Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.”
Bertrand Russell
The Problems of Philosophy
Source: The Problems of Philosophy
"The Moral Problem"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Contexte: There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.
“Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.”
Bertrand Russell
livre
The Conquest of Happiness
Source: The Conquest of Happiness
“Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.”
Attributed to Russell in Prochnow's Speakers Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms (1955), p. 132
Disputed
Justice in War-Time (1916), p. 70
1910s
Bertrand Russell
livre
Our Knowledge of the External World
Source: Our Knowledge of the External World
Source: 1930s, Education and the Social Order (1932), p. 31
“Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure…”
A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42 (1996), p. 443
Attributed from posthumous publications
“I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive.”
Cf. Richard Dawkins (2003), A Devil's Chaplain: «There is more than just grandeur in this view of life, bleak and cold though it can seem from under the security blanket of ignorance. There is deep refreshment to be had from standing up and facing straight into the strong keen wind of understanding: Yeats's 'Winds that blow through the starry ways'.»
1920s, What I Believe (1925)
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Contexte: Religion, since it has its source in terror, has dignified certain kinds of fear and made people think them not disgraceful. In this it has done mankind a great disservice: all fear is bad. I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.
“One must care about a world one will not see.”
Attributed to Russell in The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations (1997), p. 450, and in Robertson's Dictionary of Quotations (1998), p. 362, but no specific source is given.
Disputed
