FastSaying

My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

Bertrand Russell

Related Quotes

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite.
— Bertrand Russell
Beliefs
Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.
— Bertrand Russell
AbsoluteBothCertain
If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument
— Bertrand Russell
AgnosticAgnosticismCosmology
The desire for excitement is very deep-seated in human beings, eI was a solitary, shy, priggish youth. I had no experience of the social pleasures of boyhood and did not miss them. But I liked mathematics, and mathematics was suspect because it has n
— Bertrand Russell
DesireExcitementYouth
Philosophy is an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously.
— Bertrand Russell
Philosophy