Our Knowledge of the External World Quotes

“Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.”
― Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World

“The true function of logic ... as applied to matters of experience ... is analytic rather than constructive; taken a priori, it shows the possibility of hitherto unsuspected alternatives more often than the impossibility of alternatives which seemed prima facie possible. Thus, while it liberates imagination as to what the world may be, it refuses to legislate as to what the world is”
― Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World

“And where a solution appears possible, the new logic provides a method which enables us to obtain results that do not merely embody personal idiosyncrasies, but must command the assent of all who are competent to form an opinion.”
― Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World

“The discovery of geometry had intoxicated them, and its a priori deductive method appeared capable of universal application. They would prove, for instance, that all reality is one, that there is no such thing as change, that the world of sense is a world of mere illusion; and the strangeness of their results gave them no qualms because they believed in the correctness of their reasoning.”
― Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy