“An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalisation would be just as well founded as the generalisation which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet.”

— Bertrand Russell

Variant: An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalisation would be just as well founded as the generalisation which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet.
Source: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 6: On the Scientific Method in Philosophy.Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for co-operation with oneself.

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 "An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across …" by Bertrand Russell?

Bertrand Russell 562

logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and politi… 1872–1970

Related quotes

“I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: The Portable Dorothy Parker

“For crude classifications and false generalisations are the curse of all organised human life.”

H. G. Wells book A Modern Utopia

Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 10, sect. 1

“If there be such a principle as justice, or natural law, it is the principle, or law, that tells us what rights were given to every human being at his birth; what rights are, therefore, inherent in him as a human being, necessarily remain with him during life; and, however capable of being trampled upon, are incapable of being blotted out, extinguished, annihilated, or separated or eliminated from his nature as a human being, or deprived of their inherent authority or obligation.

On the other hand, if there be no such principle as justice, or natural law, then every human being came into the world utterly destitute of rights; and coming into the world destitute of rights, he must necessarily forever remain so. For if no one brings any rights with him into the world, clearly no one can ever have any rights of his own, or give any to another. And the consequence would be that mankind could never have any rights; and for them to talk of any such things as their rights, would be to talk of things that never had, never will have, and never can have any existence.”

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

Section IV, p. 12–13
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter II. The Science of Justice (Continued)

“On the positive side, my anarchism came mainly as a corollary to the estimate of human capacity for self-improvement which I had picked up from Mr. Jefferson. His fundamental idea appeared to be that everyone answering to the zoological classification of homo sapiens is a human being, and therefore is indefinitely improvable. The essence of it is that homo sapiens in his natural state really wishes and means to be as decent towards his fellow-beings as he can, and under favorable conditions will progress in decency.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

A Little Conserva-tive (1936)

“Human beings of any age need to approve of themselves; the bad times in history come when they cannot.”

Barbara W. Tuchman (1912–1989) American historian and author

Source: A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

“I, for one, have never in my life come across a perfectly healthy human being.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

The psychoanalyst "Dr. Krokowski" in Ch. 1
The Magic Mountain (1924)

“A very special human being…He had friends and admirers not just in India but also across the world who will now miss him.”

Sunil Dutt (1929–2005) Hindi film actor

By Indira Gandhi in Bollywood legend Sunil Dutt dies, 25 May, 2005, 6 December 2013, BBC Nnews http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4577963.stm,

“No one so dislikes being punished unjustly as the person who might have been punished justly on scores of previous occasions, if he had only been found out.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Source: Tales of St. Austin's

“human being is by nature a philosopher”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Encyclical Fides et Ratio, 14 September 1998
Source: www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio_en.html

“Knowledge grows, but human beings remain much the same.Belief in progress is a relic of the Christian view of history as a universal narrative, and an intellectually rigorous atheism would start by questioning it.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Atheist Delusion (2008)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Bertrand Russell 562

Related quotes

Related topics