A Quote by Bertrand Russell

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

Bertrand Russell

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All My Life Animal Been Could Evidence Life Man My Life Rational Said Searching Support Which

Quote Author

Bertrand Russell
British - Celebrity
May 18, 1872 - February 2, 1970

Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. … Aristotle, so far as I know, was the first man to proclaim explicitly that man is a rational animal. His reason for this view was … that some people can do sums. … It is in virtue of the intellect that man is a rational animal. The intellect is shown in various ways, but most emphatically by mastery of arithmetic. The Greek system of numerals was very bad, so that the multiplication table was quite difficult, and complicated calculations could only be made by very clever people.

Bertrand Russell

Man is a rational animal – so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favour of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents.

Bertrand Russell

The fact that scientists do not consciously practice a formal methodology is very poor evidence that no such methodology exists. It could be said-has been said-that there is a distinctive methodology of science which scientists practice unwittingly, like the chap in Moliere who found that all his life, unknowingly, he had been speaking prose.

Peter Medawar

Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice-and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man-by choice; he has to hold his life as a value-by choice; he has to learn to sustain it-by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues-by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

John Galt

Martyrdom is evidence only of a man's honesty - it is no evidence that he is not mistaken. Men have suffered martyrdom for all sorts of opinions in politics and in religion; yet they could not therefore have all been in the right; although they could give no stronger evidence that they believed themselves in the right.

Lysander Spooner

I could cut my leg of; I could cut my arm off. I could gouge my eye out - I'd still probably survive, but not very well, and that's what we're doing to the ocean. It's the life support system of this planet. We've been dumping in it, we've been polluting it, we've been destroying it for decades, and we're essentially maiming ourselves.

Philippe Cousteau, Jr.

I could cut my leg off. I could cut my arm off. I could gouge an eye out. I'd still probably survive. But not very well. And that's what we're doing to the oceans. It's the life-support system of this planet. We've been dumping in it. We've been polluting it. We've been destroying it for decades. And we're essentially maiming ourselves.

Philippe Cousteau, Jr.

I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.

Oscar Wilde

I've been collecting articles on extremophile bacteria for at least the last ten years. I find them fascinating, whether they live in boiling pools at Yellowstone, around thermal vents at the floors of the oceans, or on Mars, where NASA has been searching for them as the first evidence of life beyond Earth.

Will Hobbs

I've always been searching. What am I going to do with all this - searching for that place where I could be me.

Desiree Rogers

It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.

Simone de Beauvoir

The assumption that things which have been conjured in the past will always be conjured in the guiding principle not of rational but of animal behavior.

C. S. Lewis

He said that man’s heart was the only bad heart in the animal kingdom; that man was the only animal capable of feeling malice, envy, vindictiveness, revengefulness, hatred, selfishness, the only animal that loves drunkenness, almost the only animal that could endure personal uncleanliness and a filthy habitation, the sole animal in whom was fully developed the base instinct called patriotism, the sole animal that robs, persecutes, oppresses and kills members of his own tribe, the sole animal that steals and enslaves the members of any tribe.

Mark Twain

Searching for alternative life on Earth might seem misconceived, because there is excellent evidence that every kind of life so far studied evolved from a common ancestor that lived billions of years ago. Yet most of the life that exists on Earth has never been properly classified.

Paul Davies

But having considered everything which has been said, one could by this believe that the earth and not the heavens is so moved, and there is no evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless, this seems prima facie as much, or more, against natural reason as are all or several articles of our faith. Thus, that which I have said by way of diversion (esbatement) in this manner can be valuable to refute and check those who would impugn our faith by argument.