Bertrand Russell Knowledge Quotations

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.

All definite knowledge - so I should contend - belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack by both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy.

I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know.

The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as a training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely utilitarian point of view as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom.

The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interest of the desire to know.

Philosophy is that part of science which at present people chose to have opinions about, but which they have no knowledge about. Therefore every advance in knowledge robs philosophy of some problems which formerly it had ...and will belong to science.

The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power

Some kind of philosophy is a necessity to all but the most thoughtless, and in the absence of knowledge it is almost sure to be a silly philosophy.

It is not by prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws

All that passes for knowledge can be arranged in a hierarchy of degrees of certainty, with arithmetic and the facts of perception at the top.

While the dogmatist is harmful, the sceptic is useless ...; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or of ignorance. Knowledge is not so precise a concept as is commonly thought. Instead of saying 'I know this', we ought to say 'I more or less know something more or less like this'. ... Knowledge in practical affairs has not the certainty or the precision of arithmetic.

History is valuable, to begin with, because it is true; and this, though not the whole of its value, is the foundation and condition of all the rest. That all knowledge, as such, is in some degree good, would appear to be at least probable; and the knowledge of every historical fact possesses this element of goodness, even if it posses no other.

Whatever we know without inference is mental.

Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then suchand such another proposition is true of that thing.... Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.

What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.

I hold all knowledge that is concerned with things that actually exist - all that is commonly called Science - to be of very slight value compared to the knowledge which, like philosophy and mathematics, is concerned with ideal and eternal objects, and is freed from this miserable world which God has made.

Right conduct can never, except by some rare accident, be promoted by ignorance or hindered by knowledge.