The Essential Bertrand Russell Collection Quotes

“The chief importance of knowledge by description is that it enables us to pass beyond the limits of our private experience. In spite of the fact that we can only know truths which are wholly composed of terms which we have experienced in acquaintance, we can yet have knowledge by description of things which we have never experienced.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Essential Works of Bertrand Russell

“The fundamental principle in the analysis of propositions containing descriptions is this: Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Essential Works of Bertrand Russell

“All names of places--London, England, Europe, the Earth, the Solar System--similarly involve, when used, descriptions which start from some one or more particulars with which we are acquainted. I suspect that even the Universe, as considered by metaphysics, involves such a connexion with particulars. In logic, on the contrary, where we are concerned not merely with what does exist, but with whatever might or could exist or be, no reference to actual particulars is involved.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Essential Works of Bertrand Russell

“We have acquaintance in sensation with the data of the outer senses, and in introspection with the data of what may be called the inner sense--thoughts, feelings, desires, etc.; we have acquaintance in memory with things which have been data either of the outer senses or of the inner sense. Further, it is probable, though not certain, that we have acquaintance with Self, as that which is aware of things or has desires towards things.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Essential Works of Bertrand Russell

“The question whether we are also acquainted with our bare selves, as opposed to particular thoughts and feelings, is a very difficult one, upon which it would be rash to speak positively.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Essential Works of Bertrand Russell

“Thus we find that, although the relations of physical objects have all sorts of knowable properties, derived from their correspondence with the relations of sense-data, the physical objects themselves remain unknown in their intrinsic nature, so far at least as can be discovered by means of the senses.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Essential Works of Bertrand Russell

“Thus, in so far as time is constituted by duration, there is the same necessity for distinguishing a public and a private time as there was in the case of space. But in so far as time consists in an order of before and after, there is no need to make such a distinction; the time-order which events seem to have is, so far as we can see, the same as the time-order which they do have.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Essential Works of Bertrand Russell

“Physical science, more or less unconsciously, has drifted into the view that all natural phenomena ought to be reduced to motions. Light and heat and sound are all due to wave-motions, which travel from the body emitting them to the person who sees light or feels heat or hears sound.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Essential Works of Bertrand Russell

“In one sense it must be admitted that we can never prove the existence of things other than ourselves and our experiences. No logical absurdity results from the hypothesis that the world consists of myself and my thoughts and feelings and sensations, and that everything else is mere fancy.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Essential Works of Bertrand Russell

“Now both Berkeley and Leibniz admit that there is a real table, but Berkeley says it is certain ideas in the mind of God, and Leibniz says it is a colony of souls.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Essential Works of Bertrand Russell

“Acquaintance with objects essentially consists in a relation between the mind and something other than the mind; it is this that constitutes the mind's power of knowing things. If we say that the things known must be in the mind, we are either unduly limiting the mind's power of knowing, or we are uttering a mere tautology.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Essential Works of Bertrand Russell