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Bertrand Russell on Imagination

1872–1970

← All quotes by Bertrand Russell

3 quotes

Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.

A History of Western Philosophy (1945)

The conception of the necessary unit of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of the imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the straitwaistcoated benevolent institution which idealism palms off as the totality of being.

Our Knowledge of the External World (1914)

The true function of logic ... as applied to matters of experience ... is analytic rather than constructive; taken a priori, it shows the possibility of hitherto unsuspected alternatives more often than the impossibility of alternatives which seemed prima facie possible. Thus, while it liberates imagination as to what the world may be, it refuses to legislate as to what the world is.

Our Knowledge of the External World (1914)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Bertrand Russell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.