“All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in infering that he is an inexact man.”
As quoted in World Unity, Vol. IX, 3rd edition (1931), p. 190
1930s
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Bertrand Russell 562
logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and politi… 1872–1970Related quotes
Source: Adam Bede (1859)
Context: These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people — amongst whom your life is passed — that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire — for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. And I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields — on the real breathing men and women, who can be chilled by your indifference or injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice.
So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing a griffin — the longer the claws, and the larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility which we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings — much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.
“The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets with no more respect than he exacts.”
No. 402
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)
Homecoming saga, The Ships Of Earth (1994)
“A fool boasts about what little he knows. A wise man keeps quiet about what he knows and is safe.”
Flowers of Wisdom
1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Downing Street (April 1, 1850)
“No man expects such exact fidelity as a traitor.”
fidei acerrimus exactor est perfidus
De Ira (On Anger): Book 2, cap. 28, line 7.
Moral Essays
Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 20