Bertrand Russell

The Right Honourable Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872—2 February 1970), was an influential British logician, philosopher, and mathematician, working mostly in the 20th century. A prolific writer, Bertrand Russell 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 liberal but also a socialist and anti-war activist for most of his long life. 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.

Comments about Russell

As a man

:"Bertrand Russell would not have wished to be called a saint of any description; but he was a great and good man."

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::— A.J. Ayer, Bertrand Russell, NY: Viking Press, 1972.

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As a philosopher

:"It is difficult to overstate the extent to which Russell's thought dominated twentieth century analytic philosophy: virtually every strand in its development either originated with him or was transformed by being transmitted through him. Analytic philosophy itself owes its existence more to Russell than to any other philosopher."

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::— Nicholas Griffin, The Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

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As a writer and his place in history

:"Russell's prose has been compared by T.S. Eliot to that of David Hume's. I would rank it higher, for it had more color, juice, and humor. But to be lucid, exciting and profound in the main body of one's work is a combination of virtues given to few philosophers. Bertrand Russell has achieved immortality by his philosophical writings."

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::— Sidney Hook, Out of Step, An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century, NY: Carol & Graff, 1988.

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:"Russell's books should be bound in two colours, those dealing with mathematical logic in red—and all students of philosophy should read them; those dealing with ethics and politics in blue—and no one should be allowed to read them."

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::— Rush Rhees, Recollections of Wittgenstein, Oxford Paperbacks, 1984.

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As a mathematician and logician

:Of the Principia: "...its enduring value was simply a deeper understanding of the central concepts of mathematics and their basic laws and interrelationships. Their total translatability into just elementary logic and a simple familiar two-place predicate, membership, is of itself a philosophical sensation."

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::— W.V. Quine, From Stimulus to Science, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.

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As an activist

:"Oh, Bertrand Russell! Oh, Hewlett Johnson! Where, oh where, was your flaming conscience at that time?"

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::— Alexandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Harper & Row, 1974.

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As a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature

:In other words, it was specifically not for his incontestably great contributions to philosophy—The Principles of Mathematics, 'On Denoting' and Principia Mathematica—that he was being honoured, but for the later work that his fellow philosophers were unanimous in regarding as inferior.

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::— Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell, The Ghost of Madness, p. 332.

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From a daughter

:"He was the most fascinating man I have ever known, the only man I ever loved, the greatest man I shall ever meet, the wittiest, the gayest, the most charming. It was a privilege to know him and I thank God he was my father."

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::— Katharine Tait, My Father Bertrand Russell, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.

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