I think every big town should contain artificial waterfalls that people could descend in very fragile canoes, and they should contain bathing pools full of mechanical sharks. Any person found advocating a preventive war should be condemned to two hours a day with these ingenious monsters.
Bertrand Russell: Autobiography
I’m getting on pretty well with German, though I haven’t arrived at the stage of finding it a reasonable medium for the expression of thought. I think the original couple who spoke it must have died rather soon after the Tower of Babel, leaving a rather pedantically-minded baby, who had learnt all the words of one syllable, and had to make up the long ones with them – at least how else can you account for such words as Handschule and be-ab-sichtigen?
Bertrand Russell: Autobiography
It appeared to me at the time self-evident that free love was the only rational system, and that marriage was bound up with Christian superstition.
Bertrand Russell: Autobiography
Casual experience of life is of very little use to a specialist, such as I aspire to be; good manners are absolutely useless.
Bertrand Russell: Autobiography
My interests were divided between sex, religion, and mathematics.
Bertrand Russell: Autobiography