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.

Sidney Hook

Everyone who remembers his own education remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. The teacher is the heart of the educational system.

Sidney Hook

teaching education teacher

Tolerance always has limits - it cannot tolerate what is itself actively intolerant.

Sidney Hook

hook tolerance limits

To silence criticism is to silence freedom.

Sidney Hook

liberty silence criticism

The easiest rationalization for the refusal to seek the truth is the denial that truth exists.

Sidney Hook

denial truth-is interesting

Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments.

Sidney Hook

opponents answers may

In contrast to totalitarianism, democracy can face and live with the truth about itself.

Sidney Hook

contrast democracy faces

Fear of death has been the greatest ally of tyranny past and present.

Sidney Hook

inspirational death past

To serve the public interest is not the same as being a servant of public opinion.

Sidney Hook

servant public-opinion interest

A liberal education will impart an awareness of the amazing and precious complexity of human relationships. Since those relationships are violated more often out of insensitiveness than out of deliberate intent, whatever increases sensitiveness of perception and understanding humanizes life.

Sidney Hook

awareness understanding perception

I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature.

Sidney Hook

liberty society judging

Students rarely disappoint teachers who assure them in advance that they are doomed to failure.

Sidney Hook

hook fate teacher

Nonetheless, it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs, religious doctrines constitute a speculative hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.

Sidney Hook

atheist religious order

The difference between science and religion is that the former wishes to get rid of mysteries whereas the latter worships them.

Sidney Hook

differences wish science

No one who accepts the sovereignty of truth can be a foot soldier in a party or movement. He will always find himself out of step.

Sidney Hook

party soldier feet

One of the central assumptions of the concept of democracy, perhaps its most central assumption, is that by and large human beings are better judges of their own interests.... The operating maxim of the democratic ideology is, "Whoever wears the shoe knows best where it pinches.

Sidney Hook

shoes power judging

Religious tolerance has developed more as a consequence of the impotence of religions to impose their dogmas on each other than as a consequence of spiritual humility in the quest for understanding first and last things.

Sidney Hook

humility religious spiritual

Stupidity is sometimes the greatest of historical forces.

Sidney Hook

stupidity historical sometimes

Everyone recognizes a distinction between knowledge and wisdom. . . Wisdom is a kind of knowledge. It is knowledge of the nature, career, and consequences of human values. Since these cannot be separated from the human organism and the social scene, the moral ways of man cannot be understood without knowledge of the ways of things and institutions.

Sidney Hook

careers men way

Life has meaning for anyone who takes an interest in it.

Sidney Hook

interest

The next time anyone asks you "What is Bertrand Russell's philosophy?" the correct answer is "What year, please?"

Sidney Hook

philosophy years art