“The above proposition is occasionally useful.”

Comment after the proof that 1+1=2, completed in Principia Mathematica, Volume II, 1st edition (1912), page 86 http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=umhistmath&cc=umhistmath&idno=aat3201.0002.001&frm=frameset&view=image&seq=126
1910s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The above proposition is occasionally useful." by Bertrand Russell?
Bertrand Russell photo
Bertrand Russell 562
logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and politi… 1872–1970

Related quotes

Bertrand Russell photo
Larry Wall photo

“Besides, it's good to force C programmers to use the toolbox occasionally.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[1991May31.181659.28817@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov, 1991]
Usenet postings, 1991

Thomas Jefferson photo

“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp (30 July 1816), denouncing the doctrine of the Trinity.
1810s
Context: Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.

Alfred Jules Ayer photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.) (5)”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Original German: Der Satz ist eine Wahrheitsfunktion der Elementarsätze
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

Larry Wall photo

“If you want to program in C, program in C. It's a nice language. I use it occasionally…”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[7577@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV, 1990]
Usenet postings, 1990

Karen Armstrong photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“A theorem is a proposition which is a strict logical consequence of certain definitions and other propositions”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Anatol Rapoport. " Various meanings of “theory”." http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~fczagare/PSC%20504/Rapoport%20(1958).pdf American Political Science Review 52.04 (1958): 972-988.
1950s

Baruch Spinoza photo

“You can take every one of Spinoza's propositions, and take the contrary propositions, and”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Richard Feynman, in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999), Ch. 9. The Smartest Man in the World
Context: My son is taking a course in philosophy, and last night we were looking at something by Spinoza and there was the most childish reasoning! There were all these attributes, and Substances, and all this meaningless chewing around, and we started to laugh. Now how could we do that? Here's this great Dutch philosopher, and we're laughing at him. It's because there's no excuse for it! In the same period there was Newton, there was Harvey studying the circulation of the blood, there were people with methods of analysis by which progress was being made! You can take every one of Spinoza's propositions, and take the contrary propositions, and look at the world and you can't tell which is right.

Related topics