A Quote by Bertrand Russell

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

Bertrand Russell

Quote Topics

Absurd Been Belief Evidence Fact Foolish Held Indeed Likely Majority Mankind More Opinion Sensible Silliness Spread Than Utterly View Whatever Widely

Quote Author

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

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

Bertrand Russell

A widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.

Bertrand Russell

Western civilization, because of fortuitous historical circumstances, has spread itself more widely than any other local group that has so far been known.

Ruth Benedict

During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief. The opinion prevailed amoung advanced minds that it was time that belief should be replaced increasingly by knowledge; belief that did not itself rest on knowledge was superstition, and as such had to be opposed. According to this conception, the sole function of education was to open the way to thinking and knowing, and the school, as the outstanding organ for the people's education, must serve that end exclusively.

Albert Einstein

The widely held belief that the heterosexual nuclear family is best for children has long been used as a smoke screen for homophobia and as a talking point to quash marriage-equality efforts.

Jessica Valenti

In my view, our approach to global warming exemplifies everything that is wrong with our approach to the environment. We are basing our decisions on speculation, not evidence. Proponents are pressing their views with more PR than scientific data. Indeed, we have allowed the whole issue to be politicized-red vs blue, Republican vs Democrat. This is in my view absurd. Data aren't political. Data are data. Politics leads you in the direction of a belief. Data, if you follow them, lead you to truth.

Michael Crichton

During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief.

Albert Einstein

Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely- read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely.

Hesketh Pearson

I disagree with the widely held view that it is metaphysical necessity, not nomological, that matters in the mind/body problem.

Elliott Sober

The amount of knowledge which we can justify from evidence directly available to us can never be large. The overwhelming proportion of our factual beliefs continue therefore to be held at second hand through trusting others, and in the great majority of cases our trust is placed in the authority of comparatively few people of widely acknowledged standing.

Michael Polanyi

It's a widely-held belief that Millennials are obsessed with money. And it's also wildly true. Just don't mistake it for a fixation with getting rich.

Chelsea Clinton

There has never been evidence that people from these [banned] countries are disproportionately likely to commit terrorist acts. We have sent chaos to the airports. We have offended the world. We have derailed the administration. We have done it in such an incompetent way, the administration has, that people with perfectly legal residence have been widely inconvenienced.

David Brooks

Amoebas are quite obviously widely spread protozoans and some of them have been established as causing serious disease in animals and humans. It is also quite well-established that amoebas are important contaminants of tissue cultures used in preparation of live biologicals, vaccines being the most important of them because they are widely injected into small babies and children.

Viera Scheibner

I read more widely. I made friends more widely. I wore more red. I stayed home on Sundays. I did things that were never in the realm of possible things to do before. That was a real desert experience for me.

Barbara Brown Taylor

In college, in the early 1950s, I began to learn a little about how science works, the secrets of its great success, how rigorous the standards of evidence must be if we are really to know something is true, how many false starts and dead ends have plagued human thinking, how our biases can colour our interpretation of evidence, and how often belief systems widely held and supported by the political, religious and academic hierarchies turn out to be not just slightly in error, but grotesquely wrong.