The Problems of Philosophy Quotes

“One of the great historic controversies in philosophy is the controversy between the two schools called respectively 'empiricists' and 'rationalists'. The empiricists—who are best represented by the British philosophers, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume—maintained that all our knowledge is derived from experience; the rationalists—who are represented by the Continental philosophers of the seventeenth century, especially Descartes and Leibniz—maintained that, in addition to what we know by experience, there are certain 'innate ideas' and 'innate principles', which we know independently of experience.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

“Laws of Thought'. They are as follows: (1) The law of identity: 'Whatever is, is.' (2) The law of contradiction: 'Nothing can both be and not be.' (3) The law of excluded middle: 'Everything must either be or not be.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

“we cannot know that anything exists which we do not know.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy