Bertrand Russell Autobiography
The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell Quotes
Bertrand Russell on Myspace
From
Wikipedia
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell OM FRS (18 May
1872 – 2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, logician, and
mathematician. A prolific writer, he was also a populariser of philosophy
and a commentator on a large variety of topics, ranging from very serious
issues to the mundane. Continuing a family tradition in political affairs,
he was a prominent anti-war activist for most of his long life, championing
free trade between nations and anti-imperialism. Millions looked up to
Russell as a prophet of the creative and rational life; at the same time,
his stances on many topics were extremely controversial.. (more)
Books by Bertrand Russell
Religion and Science
Why I Am Not a Christian
The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell won the Nobel prize for literature for his History of Western Philosophy and was the co-author of Principia Mathematica.
“Most people would die sooner than think – in fact they do so.”
What I Have Lived For
What I Have Lived For
(The Prologue to Bertrand Russell's Autobiography)
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life:
the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for
the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown
me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish,
reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great
that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours
of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that
terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the
rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought
it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature,
the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined.
This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life,
this is what--at last--I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand
the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have
tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above
the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the
heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of
pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by
oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole
world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life
should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly
live it again if the chance were offered me
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