View source for Bertrand Russell

{{Short description|British philosopher and logician (1872–1970)}}
{{Use British English|date=November 2020}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2023}}
{{Infobox philosopher
|honorific_prefix = [[The Right Honourable]]
|name = The Earl Russell
|honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|OM|FRS|size=100%}}
|image = Bertrand Russell smoking in 1936.jpg
|caption = Russell in 1936
|module = {{infobox officeholder
|embed = yes
|office = Member of the [[House of Lords]]
|status = [[Lords Temporal|Lord Temporal]]
|term_start = 4 March 1931
|term_end = 2 February 1970<br />[[Hereditary peer]]age
|predecessor = [[Frank Russell, 2nd Earl Russell|The 2nd Earl Russell]]
|successor = [[John Russell, 4th Earl Russell|The 4th Earl Russell]]
|party = [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] (1922–1965)
|otherparty = [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal]] (1907–1922)
}}
|birth_name = Bertrand Arthur William Russell
|birth_date = {{birth date|df=yes|1872|5|18}}
|birth_place = [[Trellech]], Monmouthshire<!--Whether Monmouthshire was in Wales in 1872 is debatable. Please leave this alone; this page is not the place for this debate-->{{efn|name=fn1}}
|death_date = {{Death date and age|df=yes|1970|2|2|1872|5|18}}
|death_place = [[Penrhyndeudraeth]], Merionethshire, Wales
|spouse = {{unbulleted list |{{marriage|[[Alys Pearsall Smith]]|1894|1921|end=div}} |{{marriage|[[Dora Russell|Dora Black]]|1921|1935|end=div}} |{{marriage |[[Patricia Russell|Patricia Spence]] |1936 |1952 |end=div}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Irvine |first=Andrew David |chapter-url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2015/entries/russell |chapter=Bertrand Russell |title=[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]] |date=1 January 2015 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N. |access-date=6 December 2016 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910142027/https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2015/entries/russell/ |url-status=live }}</ref> |{{marriage|[[Edith Finch Russell|Edith Finch]]|1952}}}}
|education = [[Trinity College, Cambridge]] ([[Bachelor of Arts|BA]], 1893)
|awards = {{unbulleted list |class=nowrap |[[De Morgan Medal]] (1932) |[[Sylvester Medal]] (1934) |[[Nobel Prize in Literature]] (1950) |[[Kalinga Prize]] (1957) |[[Jerusalem Prize]] (1963)}}
|era = [[20th-century philosophy]]
|region = [[Western philosophy]]
|school_tradition = [[Analytic philosophy]]
|institutions = {{flatlist|
* Trinity College, Cambridge
* [[London School of Economics]]
* [[University of Chicago]]
* [[University of California, Los Angeles]]
}}
|main_interests = {{flatlist|
* [[Epistemology]]
* ethics
* [[logic]]
* mathematics
* [[metaphysics]]
* [[history of philosophy]]
}}
|notable_ideas = {{collapsible list
|[[Analytic philosophy]]
|[[Automated reasoning]]
|[[Automated theorem proving]]
|[[Axiom of reducibility]]
|[[Barber paradox]]
|[[Berry paradox]]
|[[Chicken (game)|Chicken]]
|[[Connective (logic)|Connective]]
|Criticism of the [[coherence theory of truth]]
|Criticism of the [[doctrine of internal relations]]/[[logical holism]]
|[[Definite description]]
|[[Descriptivist theory of names]]
|[[Direct reference theory]]<ref>Wettstein, Howard, "[[Frege–Russell view|Frege-Russell Semantics?]]", ''Dialectica'' '''44'''(1–2), 1990, pp.&nbsp;113–135, esp. 115: "Russell maintains that when one is acquainted with something, say, a present sense datum or oneself, one can refer to it without the mediation of anything like a Fregean sense. One can refer to it, as we might say, ''directly''."</ref>
|[[Double negation]]
|[[Epistemic structural realism]]<ref>[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structural-realism/#Rel "Structural Realism"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080703161848/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/structural-realism/#Rel |date=3 July 2008 }}: entry by James Ladyman in the ''[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]]''</ref>
|[[Existential fallacy]]
|[[Failure of reference]]
|[[Knowledge by acquaintance]] and [[knowledge by description]]
|[[Logical atomism]] ([[atomic proposition]])
|[[Logical form]]
|[[Mathematical beauty]]
|[[Mathematical logic]]
|[[Meaning (philosophy of language)|Meaning]]
|[[Metamathematics]]
|[[Philosophical logic]]
|[[Predicativism]]
|[[Propositional analysis]]
|[[Propositional calculus]]
|[[Naive set theory]]
|[[Neutral monism]]<ref>{{Cite book |chapter-url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russellian-monism |chapter=Russellian Monism |title=[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]] |year=2019 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=30 July 2020 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910142036/https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russellian-monism/ |url-status=live }}</ref>
|[[Paradoxes of set theory]]
|[[Peano–Russell notation]]
|[[Propositional formula]]
|[[Self-refuting idea]]
|[[Quantification (logic)|Quantification]]
|[[Russell–Myhill paradox]]
|[[Russell's conjugation]]
|[[Russell-style universes]]
|[[Russell's paradox]]
|[[Russell's teapot]]
|Russell's theory of causal lines<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dowe |first=Phil |chapter-url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-process |chapter=Causal Processes |title=[[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]] |date=10 September 2007 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N. |access-date=29 November 2017 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910141924/https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-process/ |url-status=live }}</ref>
|[[Russellian change]]
|[[Russellian propositions]]
|[[Round square copula|Russellian view]] (Russell's critique of [[Alexius Meinong|Meinong's]] [[Abstract object theory|theory of objects]])
|[[Set-theoretic definition of natural numbers]]
|[[Singleton (mathematics)|Singleton]]
|[[Theory of descriptions]]
|[[Relation (philosophy)|Theory of relations]]
|[[Type theory]]/[[ramified type theory]]
|[[Tensor product of graphs]]
|[[Unity of the proposition]]
|title={{nbsp}}
}}
|academic_advisors=[[James Ward (psychologist)|James Ward]]<ref>[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james-ward/ James Ward] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200501112521/https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james-ward/ |date=1 May 2020 }} ([[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]])</ref><br />[[A. N. Whitehead]]
|doctoral_students=[[Ludwig Wittgenstein]]
|notable_students={{Plainlist|
* [[Raphael Demos]]
* [[Irving Copi]]
* [[Walter Pitts]]
}}
|signature=Bertrand Russell signature.svg
|signature_size     = 250px
}}

'''Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell'''<ref name="frs">{{Cite journal |last=Kreisel |first=G. |author-link=Georg Kreisel |year=1973 |title=Bertrand Arthur William Russell, Earl Russell. 1872–1970 |journal=[[Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society]] |volume=19 |pages=583–620 |doi=10.1098/rsbm.1973.0021 |jstor=769574 |doi-access=free |issn=0080-4606 }}</ref> (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and [[public intellectual]]. He influenced [[mathematics]], [[logic]], [[set theory]], and various areas of [[analytic philosophy]].<ref name="stanford">Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/ "Bertrand Russell"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070609090837/http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/ |date=9 June 2007 }}, 1 May 2003.</ref>

He was one of the early 20th century's prominent [[logic]]ians<ref name="stanford" /> and a founder of [[analytic philosophy]], along with his predecessor [[Gottlob Frege]], his friend and colleague [[G. E. Moore]], and his student and protégé [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]]. Russell with Moore led the British "revolt against [[British idealism|idealism]]".{{efn |Russell and G. E. Moore broke themselves free from [[British Idealism]] which, for nearly 90 years, had been dominating [[British philosophy]]. Russell would later recall that "with a sense of escaping from prison, we allowed ourselves to think that grass is green, that the sun and stars would exist if no one was aware of them{{nbsp}}..."<ref>Russell B, (1944) "My Mental Development", in, Paul Arthur Schilpp: ''The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell'', New York: Tudor, 1951, pp. 3–20.</ref>}} Together with his former teacher [[Alfred North Whitehead]], Russell wrote ''[[Principia Mathematica]]'', a milestone in the development of [[classical logic]] and a major attempt to reduce the whole of mathematics to [[logic]] (see [[logicism]]). Russell's article "[[On Denoting]]" has been considered a "paradigm of philosophy".<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ludlow |first=Peter |title=Descriptions, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/descriptions/ |access-date=27 December 2008 |archive-date=17 October 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181017161154/http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/descriptions/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Russell was educated at [[Trinity College, Cambridge|Trinity College]] at the [[University of Cambridge]], where he graduated in 1893. He was a [[Pacifism|pacifist]] who championed [[anti-imperialism]] and chaired the [[India League]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Rempel |first=Richard |year=1979 |title=From Imperialism to Free Trade: Couturat, Halevy and Russell's First Crusade |journal=Journal of the History of Ideas |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |volume=40 |issue=3 |pages=423–443 |doi=10.2307/2709246 |jstor=2709246}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |title=Political Ideals |publisher=Routledge |year=1988 |isbn=0-415-10907-8 |orig-date=1917}}</ref><ref name=":1" /> He went to prison for his pacifism during the [[First World War]],<ref>Samoiloff, Louise Cripps. ''C .L. R. James: Memories and Commentaries'', p.&nbsp;19. Associated University Presses, 1997. {{ISBN|0-8453-4865-5}}</ref> and he initially supported appeasing [[Adolf Hitler]]'s [[Nazi Germany]], before changing his view in 1943, describing war as a necessary "[[Lesser of two evils principle|lesser of two evils]]". In the wake of the [[Second World War]], he welcomed American global [[hegemony]] in preference to either [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] hegemony or no (or ineffective) world leadership, even if it were to come at the cost of using their [[nuclear weapon]]s.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |date=October 1946 |title=Atomic Weapon and the Prevention of War |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WwwAAAAAMBAJ |website=Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2/7–8, (1 October 1946) |page=20 |access-date=24 August 2017 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910141925/https://books.google.com/books?id=WwwAAAAAMBAJ |url-status=live }}</ref> He would later criticise [[Stalinism|Stalinist]] [[totalitarianism]], condemn the United States' involvement in the [[Vietnam War]], and become an outspoken proponent of [[nuclear disarmament]].<ref name="Gallery">{{Cite web |date=6 June 2011 |title=The Bertrand Russell oGallery |url=http://russell.mcmaster.ca/~bertrand |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110928232717/http://russell.mcmaster.ca/~bertrand |archive-date=28 September 2011 |access-date=1 October 2011 |website=Russell.mcmaster.ca}}</ref>

In 1950 Russell was awarded the [[1950 Nobel Prize in Literature|Nobel Prize in Literature]] "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and [[freedom of thought]]".<ref>[https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1950/index.html The Nobel Prize in Literature 1950&nbsp;— Bertrand Russell] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180702151048/https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1950/index.html |date=2 July 2018 }} Retrieved on 22 March 2013.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=13 April 2014 |title=British Nobel Prize Winners (1950) |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9to64vR8RvQ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211123/9to64vR8Rv |archive-date=23 November 2021 |via=YouTube}}{{cbignore}}</ref> He was also the recipient of the [[De Morgan Medal]] (1932), [[Sylvester Medal]] (1934), [[Kalinga Prize]] (1957), and [[Jerusalem Prize]] (1963).

==Biography==
===Early life and background===
Bertrand Arthur William Russell was born at [[Cleddon Hall|Ravenscroft]], a country house in [[Trellech]], Monmouthshire,<!--Whether Monmouthshire was in Wales in 1872 is debatable. Please leave this alone; this page is not the place for this debate-->{{efn|name=fn1|Though today in Wales, [[Monmouthshire]]'s status was [[Monmouthshire (historic)#Ambiguity over status|ambiguous at the time]] and was even considered by some to be in England, which it borders.}} on 18 May 1872, into an influential and liberal family of the [[British aristocracy]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hestler |first=Anna |url=https://archive.org/details/wales00hest/page/53 |title=Wales |publisher=Marshall Cavendish |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-7614-1195-6 |page=[https://archive.org/details/wales00hest/page/53 53]}}</ref><ref>Sidney Hook, "Lord Russell and the War Crimes Trial", ''Bertrand Russell: critical assessments'', Vol. 1, edited by A. D. Irvine, New York 1999, p. 178.</ref> His parents were [[John Russell, Viscount Amberley|Viscount]] and [[Katharine Russell, Viscountess Amberley|Viscountess Amberley]]. Lord Amberley consented to his wife's affair with their children's tutor,<ref>{{Cite news |date=3 February 1970 |title=Bertrand Russell Is Dead; British Philosopher, 97 |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/02/03/archives/bertrand-russell-is-dead-british-philosopher-97-bertrand-russell.html |access-date=14 April 2022 |issn=0362-4331 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910142030/https://www.nytimes.com/1970/02/03/archives/bertrand-russell-is-dead-british-philosopher-97-bertrand-russell.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |date=8 November 1877 |title=Douglas A. Spalding |work=[[Nature (journal)|Nature]] |url=https://www.nature.com/articles/017035b0 |access-date=14 April 2022 |issn=1476-4687 |archive-date=18 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220518052205/https://www.nature.com/articles/017035b0 |url-status=live }}</ref> the biologist [[Douglas Spalding]]. Both were early advocates of [[birth control]] at a time when this was considered scandalous.<ref name="calicut">{{Cite web |last=Paul |first=Ashley |title=Bertrand Russell: The Man and His Ideas |url=http://www.geocities.com/vu3ash/index.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060501064331/http://www.geocities.com/vu3ash/index.html |archive-date=1 May 2006 |access-date=28 October 2007}}</ref> Lord Amberley, a [[deist]], asked the philosopher [[John Stuart Mill]] to act as Russell's secular godfather.<ref>Russell, Bertrand and [[Ray Perkins, Jr.|Perkins, Ray]] (ed.) ''Yours faithfully, Bertrand Russell''. Open Court Publishing, 2001, p.&nbsp;4.</ref> Mill died the year after Russell's birth, but his writings later influenced Russell's life.

[[File:Bertrand Russell in 1876.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Russell as a 4-year-old]]
Russell's paternal grandfather, Lord John Russell, later [[John Russell, 1st Earl Russell|1st Earl Russell]], had twice been [[Prime Minister of the United Kingdom]] in the 1840s and 1860s.<ref name="John R">{{Cite web |last=Bloy |first=Marjie |title=Lord John Russell (1792–1878) |url=http://www.victorianweb.org/history/pms/russell.html |access-date=28 October 2007 |archive-date=24 May 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120524221142/http://www.victorianweb.org/history/pms/russell.html |url-status=live }}</ref> A member of Parliament since the early 1810s, he met [[Napoleon]] in [[Elba]].<ref>{{Citation |title=My Grandfather Met Napoleon: Bertrand Russell Interview 1952 – Enhanced Video & Audio [60 fps] |author=((Life in the 1800s)) |date=Apr 23, 2022 |website=YouTube |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OXtO92x5KA |language=en |access-date=2 May 2022 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910142002/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OXtO92x5KA |url-status=live }}</ref> The Russells had been prominent in England for several centuries before this, coming to power and the [[peerage]] with the rise of the [[Tudor dynasty]] (see: [[Duke of Bedford]]). They established themselves as one of the leading [[British Whig Party|Whig]] families and participated in political events from the [[dissolution of the monasteries]] in 1536–1540 to the [[Glorious Revolution]] in 1688–1689 and the [[Great Reform Act]] in 1832.<ref name="John R" /><ref name="peerage">G. E. Cokayne; Vicary Gibbs, H. A. Doubleday, Geoffrey H. White, Duncan Warrand and Lord Howard de Walden, eds. The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, new ed. 13 volumes in 14. 1910–1959. Reprint in 6 volumes, Gloucester, UK: Alan Sutton Publishing, 2000.</ref>

Lady Amberley was the daughter of [[Edward Stanley, 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley|Lord]] and [[Henrietta Stanley, Baroness Stanley of Alderley|Lady Stanley of Alderley]].<ref name="Gallery" /> Russell often feared the ridicule of his maternal grandmother,<ref name="Booth">{{Cite book |last=Booth |first=Wayne C. |url=https://archive.org/details/moderndogmarhet00boot |title=Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=1974 |isbn=0-226-06572-3 |access-date=6 December 2012 |url-access=registration}}</ref> one of the campaigners for [[education of women]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Crawford |first=Elizabeth |title=The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866–1928}}</ref>

===Childhood and adolescence===
[[File:Young Bertrand Russell, circa late 1880s.jpg|left|thumb|Russell as a schoolboy]]
Russell had two siblings: brother [[Frank Russell, 2nd Earl Russell|Frank]] (seven years older), and sister Rachel (four years older). In June 1874 Russell's mother died of [[diphtheria]], followed shortly by Rachel's death. In January 1876, his father died of [[bronchitis]]<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Brink |first=Andrew |date=1982 |title=Death, Depression and Creativity: A Psychobiological Approach to Bertrand Russell |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24777750 |journal=Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature |volume=15 |issue=1 |issn=0027-1276 |page=93 |jstor=24777750 }}</ref> after a long period of [[Major depressive disorder|depression]].<ref name="Monk1996">{{Cite book |last=Monk |first=Ray |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AzssomBIDRIC |title=Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude, 1872–1921 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-684-82802-2 |access-date=9 June 2024 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910142455/https://books.google.com/books?id=AzssomBIDRIC |url-status=live }}</ref>{{rp|p=14}} Frank and Bertrand were placed in the care of paternal grandparents, who lived at [[Pembroke Lodge, Richmond Park|Pembroke Lodge]] in [[Richmond Park]]. His grandfather, former Prime Minister [[John Russell, 1st Earl Russell|Earl Russell]], died in 1878, and was remembered by Russell as a kind old man in a wheelchair. His grandmother, the [[Frances Russell, Countess Russell|Countess Russell]] (née Lady Frances Elliot), was the central family figure for the rest of Russell's childhood and youth.<ref name="Gallery" /><ref name="calicut" /> The Countess was from a Scottish [[Presbyterian]] family and petitioned the [[Court of Chancery]] to set aside a provision in Amberley's will requiring the children to be raised as agnostics. Despite her religious conservatism, she held progressive views in other areas (accepting [[Darwinism]] and supporting [[Home Rule|Irish Home Rule]]), and her influence on Bertrand Russell's outlook on [[social justice]] and standing up for principle remained with him throughout his life.

[[File:Pembroke Lodge, Richmond Park.jpg|thumb|Childhood home, [[Pembroke Lodge, Richmond Park|Pembroke Lodge]], Richmond Park, London]]
Russell's adolescence was lonely and he contemplated suicide. He remarked in his autobiography that his interests in "nature and books and (later) mathematics saved me from complete despondency;"<ref>''The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell'' (Volume I, 1872–1914) George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1971, p. 31;</ref> only his wish to know more mathematics kept him from suicide.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bertrand Russell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |title=Autobiography |publisher=Psychology Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-415-18985-9 |page=38 |access-date=7 January 2016 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140331/https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |url-status=live }}</ref> He was educated at home by a series of tutors.<ref name="nobel prize">The Nobel Foundation (1950). [http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1950/russell-bio.html Bertrand Russell: The Nobel Prize in Literature 1950] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604131349/http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1950/russell-bio.html |date=4 June 2011 }}. Retrieved 11 June 2007.</ref> When Russell was eleven, his brother Frank introduced him to the work of [[Euclid]], which he described in his autobiography as "one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dVBpAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA30 |title=The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: 1872–1914 |publisher=Routledge |year=2000 |location=New York |page=30 |isbn=978-1-317-83504-2 |orig-date=1967 |access-date=6 December 2018 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910142454/https://books.google.com/books?id=dVBpAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA30#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Paul |first=Ashley |title=Bertrand Russell: The Man and His Ideas – Chapter 2 |url=http://www.geocities.com:80/vu3ash/index.htm2.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090101073812/http://www.geocities.com/vu3ash/index.htm2.htm |archive-date=1 January 2009 |access-date=6 December 2018}}</ref>

During these formative years, he also discovered the works of [[Percy Bysshe Shelley]]. Russell wrote: "I spent all my spare time reading him, and learning him by heart, knowing no one to whom I could speak of what I thought or felt, I used to reflect how wonderful it would have been to know Shelley, and to wonder whether I should meet any live human being with whom I should feel so much sympathy."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bertrand Russell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |title=Autobiography |publisher=Psychology Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-415-18985-9 |page=35 |access-date=7 January 2016 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140331/https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |url-status=live }}</ref> Russell said that beginning at age 15, he spent considerable time thinking about the validity of [[Dogma#In religion|Christian religious dogma]], which he found unconvincing.<ref>{{Cite web |year=1959 |title=1959 Bertrand Russell CBC interview |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP4FDLegX9s |website=YouTube |access-date=28 October 2015 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910142512/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP4FDLegX9s |url-status=live }}</ref> At this age, he came to the conclusion that there is no [[free will]] and, two years later, that there is no life after death. Finally, at the age of 18, after reading Mill's ''Autobiography'', he abandoned the "[[First Cause]]" argument and became an [[atheist]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bertrand Russell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |title=Autobiography |publisher=Psychology Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-415-18985-9 |chapter=2: Adolescence}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |year=1959 |title=Bertrand Russell on God |url=http://richarddawkins.net/articles/4833 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100126090302/http://richarddawkins.net/articles/4833 |archive-date=26 January 2010 |access-date=8 March 2010 |publisher=[[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation]]}}</ref>

He travelled to the continent in 1890 with an American friend, [[Edward FitzGerald (mountaineer)|Edward FitzGerald]], and with FitzGerald's family he visited the [[Paris Exhibition of 1889]] and climbed the [[Eiffel Tower]] soon after it was completed.<ref name="Russell1967a">{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |url={{Google books|dVBpAwAAQBAJ|page=39|plainurl=y}} |title=The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: 1872–1914 |publisher=Routledge |year=2000 |location=New York |page=39 |orig-date=1967}}</ref>

===Education===
[[File:Portrait of Bertrand Russell in 1893.jpg|thumb|upright|Russell at [[Trinity College, Cambridge]], in 1893]]

Russell won a scholarship to read for the [[Mathematical Tripos]] at [[Trinity College, Cambridge]], and began his studies there in 1890,<ref>{{acad |id=RSL890BA|name=Russell, the Hon. Bertrand Arthur William}}</ref> taking as coach [[Robert Rumsey Webb]]. He became acquainted with the younger [[George Edward Moore]] and came under the influence of [[Alfred North Whitehead]], who recommended him to the [[Cambridge Apostles]]. He distinguished himself in mathematics and philosophy, graduating as seventh [[Wrangler (University of Cambridge)|Wrangler]] in the former in 1893 and becoming a Fellow in the latter in 1895.<ref name="Whitehead">{{Cite web |last1=O'Connor |first1=J. J. |last2=Robertson, E. F. |date=October 2003 |title=Alfred North Whitehead |url=http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Whitehead.html |access-date=8 November 2007 |publisher=School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland}}</ref><ref name="JSTOR">{{Cite journal |last1=Griffin |first1=Nicholas |author-link=Nicholas Griffin (philosopher) |last2=Lewis |first2=Albert C. |year=1990 |title=Russell's Mathematical Education |journal=Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London |volume=44 |issue=1 |pages=51–71 |doi=10.1098/rsnr.1990.0004 |jstor=531585 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

===Early career===
{{see also|Axiom of reducibility}}
Russell began his published work in 1896 with ''German Social Democracy'', a study in politics that was an early indication of his interest in political and social theory. In 1896 he taught German social democracy at the [[London School of Economics]].<ref name="LSE">{{Cite web |date=26 August 2015 |title=London School of Economics |url=https://www.lse.ac.uk/aboutLSE/keyFacts/nobelPrizeWinners/russell.aspx |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141015192808/https://www.lse.ac.uk/aboutLSE/keyFacts/nobelPrizeWinners/russell.aspx |archive-date=15 October 2014 |publisher=London School of Economics}}</ref> He was a member of the [[Coefficients (dining club)|Coefficients dining club]] of social reformers set up in 1902 by the [[Fabian Society|Fabian]] campaigners [[Sidney Webb|Sidney]] and [[Beatrice Webb]].<ref name="LettersPg16">{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EayyTTpXL-QC&pg=PA16 |title=Yours Faithfully, Bertrand Russell: Letters to the Editor 1904–1969 |publisher=Open Court Publishing |year=2001 |isbn=0-8126-9449-X |editor-last=Ray Perkins |location=Chicago |page=16 |access-date=16 November 2007}}</ref>

He now started a study of the [[foundations of mathematics]] at Trinity. In 1897, he wrote ''An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry'' (submitted at the [[Fellow]]ship Examination of Trinity College) which discussed the [[Cayley–Klein metric]]s used for [[non-Euclidean geometry]].<ref>Russell, Bertrand (1897) ''An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry'', p. 32, re-issued 1956 by [[Dover Books]]</ref> He attended the first [[International Congress of Philosophy]] in Paris in 1900 where he met [[Giuseppe Peano]] and [[Alessandro Padoa]]. The Italians had responded to [[Georg Cantor]], making a science of [[set theory]]; they gave Russell their literature including the ''[[Formulario mathematico]]''. Russell was impressed by the precision of Peano's arguments at the Congress, read the literature upon returning to England, and came upon [[Russell's paradox]]. In 1903 he published ''[[The Principles of Mathematics]]'', a work on the foundations of mathematics. It advanced a thesis of [[logicism]], that mathematics and logic are one and the same.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Bertrand Russell, biography |url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1950/russell-bio.html |access-date=23 June 2010 |publisher=Nobel Foundation |archive-date=4 June 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604131349/http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1950/russell-bio.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

At the age of 29, in February 1901, Russell underwent what he called a "sort of mystic illumination", after witnessing [[Alfred North Whitehead|Whitehead]]'s wife's suffering in an [[Angina pectoris|angina]] attack. "I found myself filled with semi-mystical feelings about beauty and with a desire almost as profound as that of the [[Buddha]] to find some philosophy which should make human life endurable", Russell would later recall. "At the end of those five minutes, I had become a completely different person."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bertrand Russell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |title=Autobiography |publisher=Psychology Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-415-18985-9 |chapter=6: Principia Mathematica |access-date=7 January 2016 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140331/https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1905, he wrote the essay "[[On Denoting]]", which was published in the philosophical journal ''[[Mind (journal)|Mind]]''. Russell was elected a [[List of fellows of the Royal Society elected in 1908|Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1908]].<ref name="frs" /><ref name="Gallery" /> The three-volume ''[[Principia Mathematica]]'', written with Whitehead, was published between 1910 and 1913. This, along with the earlier ''The Principles of Mathematics'', soon made Russell world-famous in his field. Russell's first political activity was as the [[Independent Liberal]] candidate in the [[1907 Wimbledon by-election|1907 by-election]] for the [[Wimbledon (UK Parliament constituency)|Wimbledon constituency]], where he was not elected.<ref>{{cite book|editor1-last=Craig|editor1-first=F. W. S.|title=British Parliamentary Election Results: 1885–1918|date=1974|publisher=Macmillan Press|location=London|isbn=9781349022984}}</ref>

In 1910, he became a lecturer at the [[University of Cambridge]], Trinity College, where he had studied. He was considered for a fellowship, which would give him a vote in the college government and protect him from being fired for his opinions, but was passed over because he was "anti-clerical", because he was agnostic. He was approached by the Austrian engineering student [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]], who started undergraduate study with him. Russell viewed Wittgenstein as a successor who would continue his work on logic. He spent hours dealing with Wittgenstein's various [[phobia]]s and his bouts of despair. This was a drain on Russell's energy, but Russell continued to be fascinated by him and encouraged his academic development, including the publication of Wittgenstein's ''[[Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus]]'' in 1922.<ref name="Wittgenstein">{{Cite web |title=Russell on Wittgenstein |url=http://www.rbjones.com/rbjpub/philos/history/rvw001.htm |access-date=1 October 2011 |website=Rbjones.com}}</ref> Russell delivered his lectures on [[logical atomism]], his version of these ideas, in 1918, before the end of [[World War I]].

===First World War===
[[File:National Committee of the No-Conscription Fellowship May 1916.gif|thumb|right|Russell served on the National Committee of the [[No-Conscription Fellowship]], shown here in May 1916 (''back right'').<ref>{{Citation |last=Cyril Pearce |title='Typical' Conscientious Objectors — A Better Class of Conscience? No-Conscription Fellowship image management and the Manchester contribution 1916–1918 |work=Manchester Region History Review |volume=17 |issue=1 |page=38 |year=2004}}</ref>]]
During [[World War I]], Russell was one of the few people to engage in active [[opposition to World War I|pacifist activities]]. In 1916, due to his absence of allegiance to the war effort, he was dismissed from Trinity College following his conviction under the [[Defence of the Realm Act 1914]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Hochschild |first=Adam |year=2011 |title=I Tried to Stop the Bloody Thing |work=The American Scholar |url=http://www.theamericanscholar.org/i-tried-to-stop-the-bloody-thing/ |access-date=10 May 2011 |archive-date=17 March 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110317162326/http://www.theamericanscholar.org/i-tried-to-stop-the-bloody-thing/ |url-status=live }}</ref> He later described this, in ''[[Free Thought and Official Propaganda]]'', as an illegitimate means the state used to violate freedom of expression. Russell championed the case of [[Eric Chappelow]], a poet jailed and abused as a conscientious objector.<ref name="Moorehead">[[Caroline Moorehead]], ''Bertrand Russell: A Life'' (1992), p. 247.</ref> Russell played a part in the ''Leeds Convention'' in June 1917, a historic event which saw well over a thousand "anti-war socialists" gather; many being delegates from the [[Independent Labour Party]] and the Socialist Party, united in their pacifist beliefs and advocating a peace settlement.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Scharfenburger |first=Paul |date=17 October 2012 |title=1917 |url=http://musicandhistory.com/music-and-history-by-the-year/178-1917.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120117062625/http://musicandhistory.com/music-and-history-by-the-year/178-1917.html |archive-date=17 January 2012 |access-date=7 January 2014 |website=MusicandHistory.com}}</ref> The international press reported that Russell appeared with a number of Labour [[Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)|Members of Parliament]] (MPs), including [[Ramsay MacDonald]] and [[Philip Snowden]], as well as former [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal]] MP and anti-conscription campaigner, Professor [[Arnold Lupton]]. After the event, Russell told [[Lady Ottoline Morrell]] that, "to my surprise, when I got up to speak, I was given the greatest ovation that was possible to give anybody".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |title=Pacifism and Revolution |publisher=Routledge |year=1995 |page=xxxiv |chapter=A Summer of Hope}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=5 June 1917 |title=British Socialists – Peace Terms Discussed |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article15731745 |access-date=7 January 2014 |website=The Sydney Morning Herald |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140359/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/15731745 |url-status=live }}</ref>

His conviction in 1916 resulted in Russell being fined £100 ({{Inflation|UK|100|1917|fmt=eq|r=-2|cursign=£}}), which he refused to pay in the hope that he would be sent to prison, but his books were sold at auction to raise the money. The books were bought by friends; he later treasured his copy of the [[King James Version|King James Bible]] that was stamped "Confiscated by Cambridge Police".

A later conviction for publicly lecturing against inviting the United States to enter the war on the United Kingdom's side resulted in six months' imprisonment in [[HM Prison Brixton|Brixton Prison]] (see ''[[Bertrand Russell's political views]]'') in 1918 (he was prosecuted under the [[Defence of the Realm Act]]).<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://russell-letters.mcmaster.ca/background |title=The Brixton Letters |access-date=24 November 2023 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910144113/https://russell-letters.mcmaster.ca/background |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Pacifist">{{Cite book |last=Vellacott |first=Jo |title=Bertrand Russell and the Pacifists in the First World War |publisher=Harvester Press |year=1980 |isbn=0-85527-454-9 |location=Brighton}}</ref> He later said of his imprisonment:

{{blockquote|I found prison in many ways quite agreeable. I had no engagements, no difficult decisions to make, no fear of callers, no interruptions to my work. I read enormously; I wrote a book, "Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy"... and began the work for "The Analysis of Mind". I was rather interested in my fellow-prisoners, who seemed to me in no way morally inferior to the rest of the population, though they were on the whole slightly below the usual level of intelligence as was shown by their having been caught.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bertrand Russell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |title=Autobiography |publisher=Psychology Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-415-18985-9 |page=256 |chapter=8: The First War |access-date=7 January 2016 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140331/https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |url-status=live }}</ref>}}

While he was reading [[Lytton Strachey|Strachey]]'s ''[[Eminent Victorians]]'' chapter about [[Charles George Gordon|Gordon]] he laughed out loud in his cell prompting the warder to intervene and reminding him that "prison was a place of punishment".<ref>''The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell'' by Bertrand Russell, [[Nicholas Griffin (philosopher)|Nicholas Griffin]] 2002, letter to Gladys Rinder in May 1918</ref>

Russell was reinstated to Trinity in 1919, resigned in 1920, was Tarner Lecturer in 1926 and became a Fellow again in 1944 until 1949.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Trinity in Literature |work=Trinity College Cambridge |url=https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/about/historical-overview/trinity-in-literature/ |access-date=3 August 2017 |publisher=Trinity College |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140518/https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/about/historical-overview/trinity-in-literature/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1924, Russell again gained press attention when attending a "banquet" in the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]] with well-known campaigners, including [[Arnold Lupton]], who had been an [[Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)|MP]] and had also endured imprisonment for "passive resistance to military or naval service".<ref>{{Cite news |date=8 January 1924 |title=M. P.'s Who Have Been in Jail To Hold Banquet |work=The Reading Eagle |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1955&dat=19240108&id=G28rAAAAIBAJ&pg=3245,1355607 |access-date=18 May 2014 |archive-date=1 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210301052221/https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1955&dat=19240108&id=G28rAAAAIBAJ&pg=3245,1355607 |url-status=live }}</ref>

===G. H. Hardy on the Trinity controversy===
In 1941, [[G. H. Hardy]] wrote a 61-page pamphlet titled ''Bertrand Russell and Trinity'' (published later as a book by [[Cambridge University Press]] with a foreword by [[C. D. Broad]]) in which he gave an authoritative account of Russell's 1916 dismissal from Trinity College, explaining that a reconciliation between the college and Russell had later taken place and gave details about Russell's personal life. Hardy writes that Russell's dismissal had created a scandal since the vast majority of the Fellows of the College opposed the decision. The ensuing pressure from the Fellows induced the Council to reinstate Russell. In January 1920, it was announced that Russell had accepted the reinstatement offer from Trinity and would begin lecturing in October. In July 1920, Russell applied for a one-year leave of absence; this was approved. He spent the year giving lectures in China and Japan. In January 1921, it was announced by Trinity that Russell had resigned and his resignation had been accepted. This resignation, Hardy explains, was voluntary and was not the result of another altercation.

The reason for the resignation, according to Hardy, was that Russell was going through a tumultuous time in his personal life with a divorce and subsequent remarriage. Russell contemplated asking Trinity for another one-year leave of absence but decided against it since this would have been an "unusual application" and the situation had the potential to snowball into another controversy. Although Russell did the right thing, in Hardy's opinion, the reputation of the College suffered with Russell's resignation since the 'world of learning' knew about Russell's altercation with Trinity but not that the rift had healed. In 1925, Russell was asked by the Council of Trinity College to give the ''Tarner Lectures'' on the Philosophy of the Sciences; these would later be the basis for one of Russell's best-received books according to Hardy: ''The Analysis of Matter'', published in 1927.<ref>{{Cite book |last=G. H. Hardy |title=Bertrand Russell and Trinity |year=1970 |pages=57–8}}</ref> In the preface to the Trinity pamphlet, Hardy wrote:
{{blockquote|I wish to make it plain that Russell himself is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for the writing of the pamphlet.... I wrote it without his knowledge and, when I sent him the typescript and asked for his permission to print it, I suggested that, unless it contained misstatement of fact, he should make no comment on it. He agreed to this... no word has been changed as the result of any suggestion from him.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hardy |first1=G.H. |title=Bertrand Russell & Trinity: A college controversy of the last war |date=1942 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-11392-2|page=vii}} [https://archive.org/details/hardy_russellandtrinity Full text]</ref>}}

===Between the wars===
In August 1920, Russell travelled to [[Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic|Soviet Russia]] as part of an official delegation sent by the British government to investigate the effects of the [[Russian Revolution of 1917|Russian Revolution]].<ref name="FreeLib">{{Cite web |title=Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) |url=http://russell.thefreelibrary.com/ |access-date=11 December 2007 |publisher=Farlex |archive-date=12 May 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080512011010/http://russell.thefreelibrary.com/ |url-status=live }}</ref> He wrote a four-part series of articles, titled "Soviet Russia—1920", for the magazine ''[[The Nation]]''.<ref name="nation1">{{Cite magazine |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |date=31 July 1920 |title=Soviet Russia{{emdash}}1920 |magazine=The Nation |pages=121–125}}</ref><ref name="sov1920">{{Cite journal |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |date=20 February 2008 |orig-date=1920 |title=Lenin, Trotzky and Gorky |url=https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/lenin-trotzky-and-gorky/ |journal=The Nation |access-date=20 August 2016 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910144116/https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/lenin-trotzky-and-gorky/ |url-status=live }}</ref> He met [[Vladimir Lenin]] and had an hour-long conversation with him. In his autobiography, he mentions that he found Lenin disappointing, sensing an "impish cruelty" in him and comparing him to "an opinionated professor". He cruised down the [[Volga]] on a steamship. His experiences destroyed his previous tentative support for the revolution. He subsequently wrote a book, ''The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism'',<ref name="Practice &">Russell, Bertrand [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17350 ''The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism'' by Bertrand Russell] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120512073021/http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17350 |date=12 May 2012 }}, 1920</ref> about his experiences on this trip, taken with a group of 24 others from the UK, all of whom came home thinking well of the Soviet regime,{{citation needed|date=November 2025}} despite Russell's attempts to change their minds. For example, he told them that he had heard shots fired in the middle of the night and was sure that these were clandestine executions, but the others maintained that it was only cars backfiring.{{Citation needed|date=July 2014}}

[[File:Russell with John and Kate.jpg|thumb|left|Russell with his children, [[John Russell, 4th Earl Russell|John]] and [[Lady Katharine Tait|Kate]]]]
Russell's lover [[Dora Russell|Dora Black]], a British author, [[feminist]] and socialist campaigner, visited Soviet Russia independently at the same time; in contrast to his reaction, she was enthusiastic about the [[October Revolution|Bolshevik revolution]].<ref name="Practice &"/>

The following year, Russell, accompanied by Dora, visited [[Peking]] ([[Beijing]]) to lecture on philosophy for a year.<ref name="nobel prize" /> He went with optimism and hope, seeing China as [[History of the Republic of China#Fight against warlordism and the First United Front|then being]] on a new path.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |title=The Problem of China |date=1972 |publisher=George Allen & Unwin Ltd. |location=London |page=252}}</ref> Other scholars present in China at the time included [[John Dewey]]<ref name="pneumonia" /> and [[Rabindranath Tagore]], the Indian Nobel-laureate poet.<ref name="nobel prize" /> Before leaving China, Russell became gravely ill with [[pneumonia]], and [[List of premature obituaries|incorrect reports]] of his death were published in the Japanese press.<ref name="pneumonia">{{Cite news |date=21 April 1921 |title=Bertrand Russell Reported Dead |work=The New York Times |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1921/04/21/107014047.pdf |url-status=live |access-date=11 December 2007 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1921/04/21/107014047.pdf |archive-date=9 October 2022}}</ref> When the couple visited Japan on their return journey, Dora took on the role of spurning the local press by handing out notices reading "Mr. Bertrand Russell, having died according to the Japanese press, is unable to give interviews to Japanese journalists".<ref name="papers">{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qnaqY4gUyrAC&q=mr+bertrand+russell+having+died+according+to+the+japanese+press |chapter=Uncertain Paths to Freedom: Russia and China, 1919–22 |title=The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell |publisher=Routledge |year=2000 |isbn=0-415-09411-9 |editor-first=Richard A. |editor-last=Rempel |volume=15 |page=lxviii |no-pp=true |access-date=3 October 2020 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140336/https://books.google.com/books?id=qnaqY4gUyrAC&q=mr+bertrand+russell+having+died+according+to+the+japanese+press#v=snippet&q=mr%20bertrand%20russell%20having%20died%20according%20to%20the%20japanese%20press&f=false |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |first=Bertrand |last=Russell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |title=Autobiography |publisher=Psychology Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-415-18985-9 |chapter=10: China |quote=It provided me with the pleasure of reading my obituary notices, which I had always desired without expecting my wishes to be fulfilled... As the Japanese papers had refused to contradict the news of my death, Dora gave each of them a type-written slip saying that as I was dead I could not be interviewed |access-date=7 January 2016 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140331/https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |url-status=live }}</ref> Apparently they found this harsh and reacted resentfully.{{Citation needed|date=July 2014|reason=The editor of Vol. 15 of his _Collected Papers_ seems to have put it, in the volume's Intro, "The press, not appreciating the sarcasm, were not amused." Conceivably the context justifies attributing that, with a proper ref, to that editor (but presumably not our stating it as what the press did, felt, or said), nor necessarily as Lord Russell's opinion. We do not use irony (fundamentally, because it interferes with consistently clearly stating the verifiable facts). It is also unlikely that even BR's use of it in this circumstance, even if verifiable as his words, rises above chit-chat and to the level of being worthy of mention as a *notable* utterance or opinion of his.}}<ref>{{Cite web |date=29 September 2011 |title=A man ahead of his time |url=https://www.weekinchina.com/2011/07/a-man-ahead-of-his-time/ |access-date=26 March 2021 |archive-date=3 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210303155105/https://www.weekinchina.com/2011/07/a-man-ahead-of-his-time/ |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |title=The Problem of China |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13940/13940-h/13940-h.htm |access-date=26 March 2021 |archive-date=23 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230123113623/https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13940/13940-h/13940-h.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> Russell supported his family during this time by writing popular books explaining matters of [[physics]], ethics, and education to the layman.

{{multiple image|direction = vertical|width = 120|footer = Bertrand Russell in 1924|image1 = Bertrand Russell in 1924.jpg|image2 = Russell in 1924 01.jpg}}
From 1922 to 1927 the Russells divided their time between London and [[Cornwall]], spending summers in [[Porthcurno]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bertrand Russell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |title=Autobiography |publisher=Psychology Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-415-18985-9 |page=386 |access-date=7 January 2016 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140331/https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |url-status=live }}</ref> In the [[1922 United Kingdom general election|1922]] and [[1923 United Kingdom general election|1923 general elections]] Russell stood as a [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] candidate in the [[Chelsea (UK Parliament constituency)|Chelsea constituency]], but only on the basis that he knew he was unlikely to be elected in such a safe Conservative seat, and he was unsuccessful on both occasions.

After the birth of his two children, he became interested in education, especially [[early childhood education]]. He was not satisfied with the old [[traditional education]] and thought that [[progressive education]] also had some flaws;<ref>{{Cite web |title=A Conversation with Bertrand Russell (1952) |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb3k6tB-Or8?t=824 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181124210430/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb3k6tB-Or8 |archive-date=24 November 2018 |via=YouTube}}</ref> as a result, together with Dora, Russell founded the experimental Beacon Hill School in 1927. The school was run from a succession of different locations, including its original premises at the Russells' residence, Telegraph House, near [[Harting]], West Sussex. During this time, he published ''On Education, Especially in Early Childhood''. On 8 July 1930, Dora gave birth to her third child Harriet Ruth. After he left the school in 1932, Dora continued it until 1943.<ref name="Beacon">"Inside Beacon Hill: Bertrand Russell as Schoolmaster". Jespersen, Shirley ERIC# EJ360344, published 1987</ref><ref name="Dora">{{Cite web |date=12 May 2007 |title=Dora Russell |url=http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUrussellD.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080119030738/http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUrussellD.htm |archive-date=19 January 2008 |access-date=17 February 2008}}</ref>

In 1927 Russell met [[Barry Stevens (therapist)|Barry Fox (later Barry Stevens)]], who became a known [[Gestalt therapy|Gestalt therapist]] and writer in her later years.<ref>Kranz, D. (2011): [http://www.gestalt.de/kranz_stevens_leben.html "Barry Stevens: Leben Gestalten"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180925150850/http://www.gestalt.de/kranz_stevens_leben.html |date=25 September 2018}}. In: ''Gestaltkritik'', 2/2011, p.&nbsp;4–11.</ref> They developed an intense relationship, and in Fox's words: "...{{nbsp}}for three years we were very close."<ref>Stevens, B. (1970): ''Don't Push the River''. Lafayette, Cal. (Real People Press), p. 26.</ref> Fox sent her daughter Judith to Beacon Hill School.<ref>Gorham, D. (2005): "Dora and Bertrand Russell and Beacon Hill School", in: ''Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies'', n.s. 25, (summer 2005), p. 39–76, p. 57.</ref> From 1927 to 1932 Russell wrote 34 letters to Fox.<ref>Spadoni, C. (1981): "Recent Acquisitions: Correspondence", in: ''Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies'', Vol 1, Iss. 1, Article 6, 43–67.</ref> Upon the death of his elder brother Frank, in 1931, Russell became the 3rd [[Earl Russell]].

Russell's marriage to Dora grew tenuous, and it reached a breaking point over her having two children with an American journalist, Griffin Barry.<ref name="Dora" /> They separated in 1932 and finally divorced. On 18 January 1936, Russell married his third wife, an [[University of Oxford|Oxford]] undergraduate named [[Patricia Russell (nee Spence)|Patricia ("Peter") Spence]], who had been his children's governess since 1930. Russell and Peter had one son, [[Conrad Russell, 5th Earl Russell|Conrad Sebastian Robert Russell]], 5th Earl Russell, who became a historian and one of the leading figures in the [[Liberal Democrats (UK)|Liberal Democrat]] party.<ref name="Gallery" />

Russell returned in 1937 to the [[London School of Economics]] to lecture on the science of power.<ref name="LSE" /> During the 1930s, Russell became a friend and collaborator of [[V. K. Krishna Menon]], then President of the [[India League]], the foremost lobby in the United Kingdom for Indian independence.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |title=India in Britain: South Asian Networks and Connections, 1858–1950 |date=2013 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-0-230-39271-7 |editor-last=Nasta |editor-first=Susheila |location=New York |oclc=802321049}}</ref> Russell chaired the India League from 1932 to 1939.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Nasta |first=Susheila |title=India League |url=http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/india-league |access-date=16 June 2020 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910144232/https://www5.open.ac.uk/research-projects/making-britain/content/india-league |url-status=live }}</ref>

===Second World War===
[[Bertrand Russell's political views|Russell's political views]] changed over time, mostly about war. He opposed rearmament against [[Nazi Germany]]. In 1937, he wrote in a personal letter: "If the Germans succeed in sending an invading army to England we should do best to treat them as visitors, give them quarters and invite the commander and chief to dine with the prime minister."<ref>{{Cite web |date=19 February 2014 |title=Museum Of Tolerance Acquires Bertrand Russell's Nazi Appeasement Letter |url=http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/02/19/museum-of-tolerance-acquires-bertrand-russells-nazi-appeasement-letter/ |access-date=29 March 2017 |website=Losangeles.cbslocal.com |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140852/https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/museum-of-tolerance-acquires-bertrand-russells-nazi-appeasement-letter/ |url-status=live }}</ref> In 1940, he changed his [[appeasement]] view that avoiding a full-scale world war was more important than defeating Hitler. He concluded that Adolf Hitler taking over all of Europe would be a permanent threat to democracy. In 1943, he adopted a stance toward large-scale warfare called "relative political pacifism": "War was always a great evil, but in some particularly extreme circumstances, it may be the lesser of two evils."<ref>Russell, Bertrand, "The Future of Pacifism", The American Scholar, (1943) 13: 7–13.</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Bertrand Russell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |title=Autobiography |publisher=Psychology Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-415-18985-9 |chapter=12: Later Years of Telegraph House |quote=I found the Nazis utterly revolting – cruel, bigoted, and stupid. Morally and intellectually they were alike odious to me. Although I clung to my pacifist convictions, I did so with increasing difficulty. When, in 1940, England was threatened with invasion, I realised that, throughout the First War, I had never seriously envisaged the possibility of utter defeat. I found this possibility unbearable, and at last consciously and definitely decided that I must support what was necessary for victory in the Second War, however difficult victory might be to achieve, and however painful in its consequences |access-date=7 January 2016 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140331/https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |url-status=live }}</ref>

Before World War II, Russell taught at the [[University of Chicago]], later moving on to Los Angeles to lecture at the [[UCLA Department of Philosophy]].<ref name=":0">[https://books.google.com/books?id=xj8EAAAAMBAJ&dq=bertrand%20russell&pg=PA23 Bertrand Russell Rides Out Collegiate Cyclone] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221230175507/https://books.google.ca/books?id=xj8EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA23&dq=bertrand%20russell&pg=PA23 |date=30 December 2022 }} ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]]'', Vol. 8, No. 14, 1 April 1940</ref> He was appointed professor at the [[City College of New York]] (CCNY) in 1940, but after a public outcry the appointment was annulled by a court judgment that pronounced him "morally unfit" to teach at the college because of his opinions, especially those relating to [[sexual morality]], detailed in ''[[Marriage and Morals]]'' (1929). The matter was taken to the [[New York Supreme Court]] by [[Jean Kay]] who was afraid that her daughter would be harmed by the appointment, though her daughter was not a student at CCNY.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=McCarthy |first=Joseph M. |url=http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED363185.pdf |title=The Russell Case: Academic Freedom vs. Public Hysteria |date=May 1993 |publisher=Educational Resources Information Center |page=9 |language=en |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED363185.pdf |archive-date=9 October 2022 |url-status=live}}</ref> Many intellectuals, led by [[John Dewey]], protested at his treatment.<ref name="Denied">{{Cite news |last=Leberstein, Stephen |date=November–December 2001 |title=Appointment Denied: The Inquisition of Bertrand Russell |publisher=Academe |url=http://www.omnilogos.com/2015/01/appointment-denied-inquisition-of.html |access-date=17 February 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150123221826/http://www.omnilogos.com/2015/01/appointment-denied-inquisition-of.html |archive-date=23 January 2015}}</ref> [[Albert Einstein]]'s oft-quoted aphorism that "great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds" originated in his open letter, dated 19 March 1940, to [[Morris Raphael Cohen]], a professor emeritus at CCNY, supporting Russell's appointment.<ref>[http://www.asl-associates.com/einsteinquotes.htm Einstein quotations and sources.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110605010050/http://www.asl-associates.com/einsteinquotes.htm |date=5 June 2011 }}. Retrieved 9 July 2009.</ref> Dewey and [[Horace M. Kallen]] edited a collection of articles on the CCNY affair in ''[[The Bertrand Russell Case]]''. Russell soon joined the [[Barnes Foundation]], lecturing to a varied audience on the [[history of philosophy]]; these lectures formed the basis of ''[[A History of Western Philosophy]]''. His relationship with the eccentric [[Albert C. Barnes]] soon soured, and he returned to the UK in 1944 to rejoin the faculty of Trinity College.<ref name="professor">{{Cite web |year=2006 |title=Bertrand Russell |url=http://www.philosophyprofessor.com/philosophers/bertrand-russell.php |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080212100048/http://www.philosophyprofessor.com/philosophers/bertrand-russell.php |archive-date=12 February 2008 |access-date=17 February 2008}}</ref>

===Later life===
{{see also|1950 Nobel Prize in Literature}}
[[File:Bertrand Russell 1954.jpg|thumb|Russell in 1954]]
Russell participated in many broadcasts over the [[BBC]], particularly ''[[The Brains Trust]]'' and for the [[BBC Third Programme|Third Programme]], on various topical and philosophical subjects. By this time Russell was known outside academic circles, frequently the subject or author of magazine and newspaper articles, and was called upon to offer opinions on a variety of subjects, even mundane ones. En route to one of his lectures in [[Trondheim]], Russell was one of 24 survivors (out of 43 passengers) of an [[Bukken Bruse disaster|aeroplane crash in Hommelvik]] in October 1948. He said he owed his life to smoking since the people who drowned were in the non-smoking part of the plane.<ref name="letters">{{Cite book |title=The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell |publisher=Routledge |year=2002 |isbn=0-415-26012-4 |editor-last=Griffin, Nicholas |editor-link=Nicholas Griffin (philosopher) |page=660}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Bertrand Russell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |title=Autobiography |publisher=Psychology Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-415-18985-9 |page=512 |access-date=7 January 2016 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140331/https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |url-status=live }}</ref> ''[[A History of Western Philosophy]]'' (1945) became a best-seller and provided Russell with a steady income for the remainder of his life.

In 1942, Russell argued in favour of a moderate [[socialism]], capable of overcoming its metaphysical principles. In an inquiry on [[dialectical materialism]], launched by the Austrian artist and philosopher [[Wolfgang Paalen]] in his journal ''[[DYN (magazine)|DYN]]'', Russell said: "I think the metaphysics of both [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|Hegel]] and [[Karl Marx|Marx]] plain nonsense—Marx's claim to be 'science' is no more justified than [[Mary Baker Eddy]]'s. This does not mean that I am opposed to socialism."<ref>Russell to Edward Renouf, assistant of [[Wolfgang Paalen]], 23 March 1942 (Succession Wolfgang Paalen, Berlin); this letter is cited in ''DYN'', No. 2, Mexico, July–August 1942, p. 52.</ref>

In 1943, Russell expressed support for [[Zionism]]: "I have come gradually to see that, in a dangerous and largely hostile world, it is essential to Jews to have some country which is theirs, some region where they are not suspected aliens, some state which embodies what is distinctive in their culture".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Bertrand Russell On Zionism |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Quote/Russell_On_Zionism.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304040128/https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Quote/Russell_On_Zionism.html |archive-date=4 March 2016 |access-date=13 September 2014}}</ref>

In a speech in 1948, Russell said that if the [[USSR]]'s aggression continued, it would be morally worse to go to war after the USSR possessed an [[Nuclear weapon|atomic bomb]] than before it possessed one, because if the USSR had no bomb the West's victory would come more swiftly and with fewer casualties than if there were atomic bombs on both sides.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Bertrand Russell and Preventive War |url=http://www.plymouth.edu/department/history-philosophy/files/2012/10/Bertrand-Russell-and-Preventive-War.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170305003733/http://www.plymouth.edu/department/history-philosophy/files/2012/10/Bertrand-Russell-and-Preventive-War.pdf |archive-date=5 March 2017 |access-date=29 March 2017 |website=Plymouth.edu}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |date=21 July 2001 |title=A philosopher's letters – Love, Bertie |newspaper=The Economist |url=http://www.economist.com/books/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=699582 |access-date=5 August 2006 |archive-date=6 February 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090206014335/http://www.economist.com/books/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=699582 |url-status=live }}</ref> At that time, only the United States possessed an atomic bomb, and the USSR was pursuing an aggressive policy towards the countries in Eastern Europe which were being absorbed into the Soviet Union's [[sphere of influence]]. Many understood Russell's comments to mean that Russell approved of a [[Pre-emptive nuclear strike|first strike]] in a war with the USSR, including [[Nigel Lawson]], who was present when Russell spoke of such matters. Others, including [[Nicholas Griffin (philosopher)|Griffin]], who obtained a transcript of the speech, have argued that he was explaining the usefulness of America's atomic arsenal in deterring the USSR from continuing its domination of Eastern Europe.<ref name="letters" />

Just after the [[Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki|atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki]], Russell wrote letters, and published articles in newspapers from 1945 to 1948, stating clearly that it was morally justified and better to go to war against the USSR using atomic bombs while the United States possessed them and before the USSR did.<ref name="clark">{{Cite book |last=Clark |first=Ronald William |url=https://archive.org/details/lifeofbertrandru00clar |title=The Life of Bertrand Russell|year=1976 |publisher=Knopf |isbn=978-0394490595 |url-access=registration}}</ref> In September 1949, one week after the USSR tested its first A-bomb, but before this became known, Russell wrote that the USSR would be unable to develop nuclear weapons because following Stalin's purges only science based on Marxist principles would be practised in the Soviet Union.<ref>He wrote: "There is reason to think Stalin will insist on a new orthodoxy in atomic physics, since there is much in quantum theory that runs contrary to Communist dogma. An atomic bomb' made on Marxist principles would probably not explode because, after all, Marxist science was that of a hundred years ago. For those who fear the military power of Russia there is, therefore, some reason to rejoice in the muzzling of Russian science." Russell, Bertrand "Stalin Declares War on Science" Review of Langdon-Davies, ''Russia Puts Back the Clock'', ''Evening Standard'' (London), 7 September 1949, p. 9.</ref> After it became known that the USSR had carried out [[List of nuclear weapons tests of the Soviet Union|its nuclear bomb tests]], Russell declared his position advocating the total abolition of atomic weapons.<ref name=clark/>

In 1948, Russell was invited by the BBC to deliver the inaugural [[Reith Lectures]]<ref>{{Cite web |title=Radio 4 Programmes – The Reith Lectures |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00729d9 |access-date=1 October 2011 |publisher=BBC |archive-date=8 August 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160808025444/http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00729d9 |url-status=live }}</ref>—what was to become an annual series of lectures, still broadcast by the BBC. His series of six broadcasts, titled ''Authority and the Individual'',<ref>{{Cite web |title=Radio 4 Programmes – The Reith Lectures: Bertrand Russell: Authority and the Individual: 1948 |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00h9lz3 |access-date=1 October 2011 |publisher=BBC |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910144124/https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00h9lz3 |url-status=live }}</ref> explored themes such as the role of individual initiative in the development of a community and the role of state control in a progressive society. Russell continued to write about philosophy. He wrote a foreword to ''Words and Things'' by [[Ernest Gellner]], which was highly critical of the [[Philosophical Investigations|later thought]] of [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]] and of [[ordinary language philosophy]]. [[Gilbert Ryle]] refused to have the book reviewed in the philosophical journal ''[[Mind (journal)|Mind]]'', which caused Russell to respond via ''[[The Times]]''. The result was a month-long correspondence in ''The Times'' between the supporters and detractors of ordinary language philosophy, which was ended when the paper published an editorial critical of both sides but agreeing with the opponents of ordinary language philosophy.<ref>T. P. Uschanov, [http://www.helsinki.fi/~tuschano/writings/strange/ The Strange Death of Ordinary Language Philosophy] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110614213110/http://www.helsinki.fi/~tuschano/writings/strange/ |date=14 June 2011 }}. The controversy has been described by the writer [[Ved Mehta]] in ''Fly and the Fly Bottle'' (1963).</ref>

In the King's [[Birthday Honours]] of 9 June 1949, Russell was awarded the [[Order of Merit (Commonwealth)|Order of Merit]],<ref>{{London Gazette |issue=38628 |supp=y|page=2796 |date=3 June 1949}}</ref> and the following year he was awarded the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]].<ref name="Gallery" /><ref name="nobel prize" /> When he was given the Order of Merit, [[George VI]] was affable but embarrassed at decorating a former jailbird, saying, "You have sometimes behaved in a manner that would not do if generally adopted".<ref>Ronald W. Clark, ''Bertrand Russell and His World'', p.&nbsp;94. (1981) {{isbn|0-500-13070-1}}</ref> Russell merely smiled, but afterwards claimed that the reply "That's right, just like your [[Edward VIII|brother]]" immediately came to mind.

In 1950, Russell attended the inaugural conference for the [[Congress for Cultural Freedom]], a [[CIA]]-funded anti-communist organisation committed to the deployment of culture as a weapon during the [[Cold War]].<ref name=Saunders_book>{{cite book |last=Saunders |first=Frances Stonor |title=[[Who Paid the Piper?|The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters]] |location=New York |publisher=The New Press |year=2000 |orig-date=1999 |pages=91–92 |isbn=978-1565845961}}</ref> Russell was one of the known patrons of the Congress until he resigned in 1956.<ref name=Saunders_book />

In 1952, Russell was divorced by Spence, with whom he had been very unhappy.{{Citation needed|date=December 2021}} Conrad, Russell's son by Spence, did not see his father between the time of the divorce and 1968 (at which time his decision to meet his father caused a permanent breach with his mother). Russell married his fourth wife, [[Edith Finch Russell|Edith Finch]], soon after the divorce, on 15 December 1952. They had known each other since 1925, and Edith had taught English at [[Bryn Mawr College]] near Philadelphia, sharing a house for 20 years with Russell's old friend [[Lucy Donnelly]]. Edith remained with him until his death, and, by all accounts, their marriage was a happy, close, and loving one. Russell's eldest son John suffered from [[mental illness]], which was the source of ongoing disputes between Russell and his former wife Dora.{{Citation needed|date=December 2021}}

In 1962 Russell played a public role in the [[Cuban Missile Crisis#Crisis deepens|Cuban Missile Crisis]]: in an exchange of telegrams with Soviet leader [[Nikita Khrushchev]], Khrushchev assured him that the Soviet government would not be reckless.<ref>[https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/russelljournal/article/view/1632/1658 Russell and the Cuban missile crisis] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200807002427/https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/russelljournal/article/view/1632/1658 |date=7 August 2020 }}, by [[Al Seckel]], [[California Institute of Technology]] // [https://russell.humanities.mcmaster.ca/journal.htm Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191217134416/https://russell.humanities.mcmaster.ca/journal.htm |date=17 December 2019 }}, [[McMaster University]], [https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/russelljournal/article/view/1632 Vol '''4''' (1984), Issue 2, Winter 1984–85, pp. 253–261] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191217134416/https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/russelljournal/article/view/1632 |date=17 December 2019 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Sanderson Beck |title=World Peace Efforts Since Gandhi |publisher=Sanderson Beck |year=2003–2005 |chapter=Pacifism of Bertrand Russell and A. J. Muste |access-date=24 June 2012 |chapter-url=http://www.san.beck.org/GPJ24-Russell,Muste.html |archive-date=24 June 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120624180927/http://www.san.beck.org/GPJ24-Russell%2CMuste.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Russell sent this telegram to [[John F. Kennedy|President Kennedy]]:
{{blockquote|YOUR ACTION DESPERATE. THREAT TO HUMAN SURVIVAL. NO CONCEIVABLE JUSTIFICATION. CIVILIZED MAN CONDEMNS IT. WE WILL NOT HAVE MASS MURDER. ULTIMATUM MEANS WAR... END THIS MADNESS.<ref>{{Cite book |last=John H. Davis |title=The Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster |publisher=S. P. Books |page=437}}</ref>}}

According to historian Peter Knight, after JFK's [[John F. Kennedy assassination|assassination]], Russell, "prompted by the emerging work of the lawyer [[Mark Lane (author)|Mark Lane]] in the US ... rallied support from other noteworthy and left-leaning compatriots to form a 'Who Killed Kennedy committee' in June 1964, members of which included [[Michael Foot]] MP, [[Caroline Benn]]
(wife of [[Tony Benn]] MP), the publisher [[Victor Gollancz]], the writers [[John Arden]] and [[J. B. Priestley]], and the Oxford history professor [[Hugh Trevor-Roper]]." Russell published a highly critical article in ''[[M. S. Arnoni|The Minority of One]]'' weeks before the [[Warren Commission]] report was published, setting forth ''16 Questions on the Assassination.''<ref>{{cite news |url=http://22november1963.org.uk/bertrand-russell-16-questions-on-the-assassination |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |title=16 Questions on the Assassination |via=22november1963.org.uk |date=6 September 1964 |pages=6–8 |newspaper=The Minority of One}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Feinberg |first1=Barry |title=Bertrand Russell's America |last2=Kasrils |first2=Ronald |date=1983 |publisher=South End Press |volume=2 |location=Boston |pages=211}}</ref> Russell equated the [[Lee Harvey Oswald|Oswald]] case with the [[Dreyfus affair]] of late 19th-century France, in which the state convicted an innocent man. Russell also criticised the American press for failing to heed any voices critical of the official version.<ref>Peter Knight, ''The Kennedy Assassination'', Edinburgh University Press Ltd., 2007, p. 77.</ref>

===Political causes===
{{Main|Political views of Bertrand Russell}}

Bertrand Russell was opposed to war from a young age; his opposition to World War I was used as grounds for his dismissal from Trinity College at Cambridge. This incident fused two of his controversial causes, as he had failed to be granted fellow status which would have protected him from firing, because he was not willing to either pretend to be a devout Christian, or at least avoid admitting he was agnostic.

He later described the resolution of these issues as essential to freedom of thought and expression, citing the incident in [[Free Thought and Official Propaganda]], where he explained that the expression of any idea, even the most obviously "bad", must be protected not only from direct State intervention but also economic leveraging and other means of being silenced:

{{blockquote|The opinions which are still persecuted strike the majority as so monstrous and immoral that the general principle of toleration cannot be held to apply to them. But this is exactly the same view as that which made possible the tortures of the [[Spanish Inquisition|Inquisition]].<ref name="free">{{Cite web |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |title=Free Thought and Official Propaganda |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44932/44932-h/44932-h.htm |access-date=14 May 2019 |via=Project Gutenberg |archive-date=4 January 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180104073140/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44932/44932-h/44932-h.htm |url-status=live }}</ref>}}

Russell spent the 1950s and 1960s engaged in political causes primarily related to [[nuclear disarmament]] and opposing the [[Vietnam War]]. The 1955 [[Russell–Einstein Manifesto]] was a document calling for nuclear disarmament and was signed by eleven of the most prominent nuclear physicists and intellectuals of the time.<ref name="Manifesto">{{Cite web |last1=Russell, Bertrand |last2=Albert Einstein |author-link2=Albert Einstein |date=9 July 1955 |title=Russell Einstein Manifesto |url=http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/texts/doc_russelleinstein_manif.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090801154612/http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/texts/doc_russelleinstein_manif.html |archive-date=1 August 2009 |access-date=17 February 2008}}</ref> In October 1960 "[[Committee of 100 (United Kingdom)|The Committee of 100]]" was formed with a declaration by Russell and [[Michael Scott (priest)|Michael Scott]], entitled "Act or Perish", which called for a "movement of nonviolent resistance to nuclear war and weapons of mass destruction".<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://rethinkingsecurity.org.uk/2020/10/16/committee-of-100-and-extinction-rebellion/ |title=Nonviolent Direct Action: The Committee of 100 and Extinction Rebellion |date=16 October 2020 |access-date=24 November 2023 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910144125/https://rethinkingsecurity.org.uk/2020/10/16/committee-of-100-and-extinction-rebellion/ |url-status=live }}</ref> In September 1961, at the age of 89, Russell was jailed for seven days in [[HM Prison Brixton|Brixton Prison]] for a "breach of the peace" after taking part in [[Committee of 100 (United Kingdom)#1961|an anti-nuclear demonstration]] in London. The magistrate offered to exempt him from jail if he pledged himself to "good behaviour", to which Russell replied: "No, I won't."<ref>Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, ''Bertrand Russell, 1872–1970'' [1970], p.&nbsp;12</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell, Bertrand |title=The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 3 |publisher=Little, Brown |year=1967 |page=157}}</ref>

From 1966 to 1967, Russell worked with [[Jean-Paul Sartre]] and many other intellectual figures to form the [[Russell Tribunal|Russell Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal]] to investigate the conduct of the United States in Vietnam. He wrote many letters to world leaders during this period.

Early in his life, Russell supported [[eugenics|eugenicist]] policies. In 1894, he proposed that the state issue certificates of health to prospective parents and withhold public benefits from those considered unfit.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Griffin |first=Nicholas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hV7bHY0fTCoC&pg=PA125 |title=The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Private Years, 1884–1914 |date=2002 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-26014-5 |pages=588 |access-date=5 April 2021 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140918/https://books.google.com/books?id=hV7bHY0fTCoC&pg=PA125#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live }}</ref> In 1929, he wrote that people deemed "mentally defective" and "feebleminded" should be sexually sterilised because they "are apt to have enormous numbers of illegitimate children, all, as a rule, wholly useless to the community."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |title=Marriage and Morals |date=1929 |publisher=H. Liverwright |language=en}}</ref> Russell was also an advocate of [[population control]]:<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pandey |first=V. C. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_eI5avFlStYC&pg=PA211 |title=Population Education |date=2005 |publisher=Gyan Publishing House |isbn=978-81-8205-176-8 |pages=211 |language=en |access-date=8 March 2021 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140853/https://books.google.com/books?id=_eI5avFlStYC&pg=PA211#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Impact">{{cite book | last=Russell | first=Bertrand | title=The Impact of Science on Society | publisher=Routledge | publication-place=London; New York | date=2016 | isbn=978-1-138-64115-0 | page=}}</ref>{{blockquote|The nations which at present increase rapidly should be encouraged to adopt the methods by which, in the West, the increase of population has been checked. Educational propaganda, with government help, could achieve this result in a generation. There are, however, two powerful forces opposed to such a policy: one is religion, the other is nationalism. I think it is the duty of all to proclaim that opposition to the spread of birth is appalling depth of misery and degradation, and that within another fifty years or so. I do not pretend that [[birth control]] is the only way in which population can be kept from increasing. There are others, which, one must suppose, opponents of birth control would prefer. War, as I remarked a moment ago, has hitherto been disappointing in this respect, but perhaps bacteriological war may prove more effective. If a [[Black Death]] could be spread throughout the whole world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full.}}

On 20 November 1948, in a public speech at [[Westminster School]], addressing a gathering arranged by the New Commonwealth, Russell shocked some observers by suggesting that a preemptive nuclear strike on the [[Soviet Union]] was justified. Russell argued that war between the United States and the Soviet Union seemed inevitable, so it would be a humanitarian gesture to get it over with quickly and have the United States in the dominant position. Currently, Russell argued, humanity could survive such a war, whereas a full [[nuclear warfare|nuclear war]] after both sides had manufactured large stockpiles of more destructive weapons was likely to result in the [[extinction]] of the [[Human|human race]]. Russell later relented from this stance, instead arguing for mutual disarmament by the nuclear powers.

In 1956, before and during the [[Suez Crisis]], Russell expressed his opposition to European imperialism in the Middle East. He viewed the crisis as another reminder of the pressing need for an effective mechanism for international governance, and to restrict national sovereignty in places such as the [[Suez Canal]] area "where general interest is involved". At the same time the Suez Crisis was taking place, the world was also captivated by the [[Hungarian Revolution of 1956|Hungarian Revolution]] and the subsequent crushing of the revolt by intervening Soviet forces. Russell attracted criticism for speaking out fervently against the Suez war while ignoring Soviet repression in Hungary, to which he responded that he did not criticise the Soviets "because there was no need. Most of the so-called Western World was fulminating". Although he later feigned a lack of concern, at the time he was disgusted by the brutal Soviet response, and on 16 November 1956, he expressed approval for a declaration of support for Hungarian scholars which [[Michael Polanyi]] had cabled to the Soviet embassy in London twelve days previously, shortly after Soviet troops had entered [[Budapest]].<ref>''Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell'' (Psychology Press, 2005)</ref>

In November 1957 Russell wrote an article addressing US President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] and Soviet Premier [[Nikita Khrushchev]], urging a summit to consider "the conditions of co-existence". Khrushchev responded that peace could be served by such a meeting. In January 1958 Russell elaborated his views in ''[[The Observer]]'', proposing a cessation of all nuclear weapons production, with the UK taking the first step by unilaterally suspending its own nuclear weapons programme if necessary, and with Germany "freed from all alien armed forces and pledged to neutrality in any conflict between East and West". US Secretary of State [[John Foster Dulles]] replied for Eisenhower. The exchange of letters was published as ''The Vital Letters of Russell, Khrushchev, and Dulles''.<ref name="ref1">''Yours Faithfully, Bertrand Russell'' (pp. 212–213).</ref>

Russell was asked by ''[[The New Republic]]'', a liberal American magazine, to elaborate his views on world peace. He urged that all nuclear weapons testing and flights by planes armed with nuclear weapons be halted immediately, and negotiations be opened for the destruction of all [[hydrogen bombs]], with the number of conventional nuclear devices limited to ensure a balance of power. He proposed that Germany be reunified and accept the [[Oder-Neisse line]] as its border, and that a neutral zone be established in Central Europe, consisting at the minimum of Germany, Poland, Hungary, and [[Czechoslovakia]], with each of these countries being free of foreign troops and influence, and prohibited from forming alliances with countries outside the zone. In the Middle East, Russell suggested that the West avoid opposing [[Arab nationalism]], and proposed the creation of a United Nations peacekeeping force to guard Israel's frontiers to ensure that Israel was prevented from committing aggression and protected from it. He also suggested Western recognition of the [[People's Republic of China]], and that it be admitted to the UN with a permanent seat on the [[UN Security Council]].<ref name=ref1/>

He was in contact with [[Lionel Rogosin]] while the latter was filming his anti-war film ''[[Good Times, Wonderful Times]]'' in the 1960s. He became a hero to many of the youthful members of the [[New Left]]. In early 1963, Russell became increasingly vocal in his disapproval of the Vietnam War, and felt that the US government's policies there were near-[[genocidal]]. In 1963, he became the inaugural recipient of the [[Jerusalem Prize]], an award for writers concerned with the freedom of the individual in society.<ref name="jerusalem prize">{{Cite web |title=Jerusalem International Book Fair |url=http://www.jerusalembookfair.com/main.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080122165019/http://www.jerusalembookfair.com/main.html |archive-date=22 January 2008 |access-date=1 October 2011 |publisher=Jerusalembookfair.com}}</ref> In 1964, he was one of eleven world figures who issued an appeal to Israel and the [[Arab world|Arab countries]] to accept an [[arms embargo]] and international supervision of [[nuclear plant]]s and rocket weaponry.<ref>{{Cite web |date=26 February 1964 |title=Bertrand Russell Appeals to Arabs and Israel on Rocket Weapons |url=https://www.jta.org/1964/02/26/archive/bertrand-russell-appeals-to-arabs-and-israel-on-rocket-weapons |publisher=Jewish Telegraphic Agency |access-date=5 January 2014 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910144140/https://www.jta.org/archive/bertrand-russell-appeals-to-arabs-and-israel-on-rocket-weapons |url-status=live }}</ref> In October 1965, he tore up his [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] card because he suspected [[Harold Wilson]]'s Labour government was going to send troops to support the United States in Vietnam.<ref name="Gallery" />

===Final years, death and legacy===
[[File:Plas Penrhyn (geograph 6365767).jpg|thumb|Plas Penrhyn in [[Penrhyndeudraeth]]]]
[[File:Bertrand Russell 1972 stamp of India.jpg|thumb|Russell on a 1972 stamp of India]]
In June 1955, Russell had leased Plas Penrhyn in [[Penrhyndeudraeth]], Merionethshire, Wales and on 5 July of the following year it became his and Edith's principal residence.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eogqBgAAQBAJ&pg=iii |title=The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell Volume 29: Détente Or Destruction, 1955–57 |year=2012 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-35837-8 |editor-last=Andrew G. Bone |location=Abingdon |page=iii |author-link=Bertrand Russell}}</ref>

[[File:Bust Of Bertrand Russell-Red Lion Square-London.jpg|thumb|Bust of Russell in [[Red Lion Square]]]]
Russell published his three-volume autobiography in 1967, 1968, and 1969. He made a [[cameo appearance]] playing himself in the anti-war [[Hindi]] film [[Aman (film)|''Aman'']], by [[Mohan Kumar (director)|Mohan Kumar]], which was released in India in 1967. This was Russell's only appearance in a feature film.<ref name="Bertrand Russell in Bollywood">{{Cite web |title=Aman (1967) |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0233193/ |publisher=IMDb |access-date=30 June 2018 |archive-date=20 October 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171020024227/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0233193/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

On 23 November 1969, he wrote to ''The Times'' newspaper saying that the preparation for show trials in Czechoslovakia was "highly alarming". The same month, he appealed to Secretary General [[U Thant]] of the United Nations to support an international war crimes commission to investigate alleged torture and genocide by the United States in [[South Vietnam]] during the Vietnam War. The following month, he protested to [[Alexei Kosygin]] over the expulsion of [[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]] from the [[Soviet Union of Writers]].

On 31 January 1970, Russell issued a statement condemning "Israel's aggression in the Middle East", and in particular, Israeli bombing raids being carried out deep in Egyptian territory as part of the [[War of Attrition]], which he compared to German bombing raids in the [[Battle of Britain]] and the US bombing of Vietnam. He called for an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-[[Six-Day War]] borders, stating "The aggression committed by Israel must be condemned, not only because no state has the right to annexe foreign territory, but because every expansion is an experiment to discover how much more aggression the world will tolerate."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Siddiqui |first=M. S. |date=23 May 2021 |title="Bertrand Russell's Last Message" on Israel and Palestine. |url=https://www.heritagetimes.in/bertrand-russells-last-message-on-israel-and-palestine/ |access-date=26 May 2024 |website=Heritage Times |language=en-US |archive-date=14 August 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240814054919/https://www.heritagetimes.in/bertrand-russells-last-message-on-israel-and-palestine |url-status=live }}</ref> This was Russell's final political statement or act. It was read out at the International Conference of Parliamentarians in [[Cairo]] on 3 February 1970, the day after his death.<ref name="Last Message">{{Cite web |date=31 January 1970 |title=Bertrand Russell's Last Message |url=http://www.connexions.org/CxLibrary/Docs/CX5576-RussellMidEast.htm |access-date=29 March 2017 |website=Connexions.org |archive-date=21 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110721001136/http://www.connexions.org/CxLibrary/Docs/CX5576-RussellMidEast.htm |url-status=live }}</ref>

Russell died of [[influenza]], just after 8&nbsp;pm on 2 February 1970 at his home in Penrhyndeudraeth, aged 97.<ref>The Guardian – 3 February 1970</ref> His body was cremated in [[Colwyn Bay]] on 5 February 1970 with five people present.<ref>The Guardian – Page 7–6 February 1970</ref> In accordance with his will, there was no religious ceremony but one minute's silence; his ashes were later scattered over the Welsh mountains.<ref name=":4" /> Although he was born in [[Monmouthshire (historic)|Monmouthshire]], and died in [[Penrhyndeudraeth]] in Wales, Russell identified as English.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Waters |first=Ivor |title=Chepstow Packets |year=1983 |isbn=0-906134-21-8 |page=44 |chapter=The Rise and Fall of Monmouthshire|publisher=Moss Rose Press }}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9UlpAwAAQBAJ |title=The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell |year=2014|publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-83503-5 |pages=434 |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":3">{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |url=https://zelalemkibret.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/the-autobiography-of-bertrand-russell.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210507001007/https://zelalemkibret.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/the-autobiography-of-bertrand-russell.pdf |archive-date=7 May 2021 |url-status=live |title=The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell 1914–1944 |pages=184, 253, 292, 380 |language=English}}</ref> Later in 1970, on 23 October, his will was published showing he had left an estate valued at £69,423 (equivalent to £{{Inflation|UK|0.069423|1970|r=1}}&nbsp;million in {{Inflation/year|UK}}).<ref name=":4">[https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/Calendar?surname=Russell&yearOfDeath=1970&page=3#calendar Russell, 1970, p. ] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171019022853/https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk/Calendar?surname=Russell&yearOfDeath=1970&page=3#calendar |date=19 October 2017 }} at probatesearch.service.gov.uk. Retrieved 29 August 2015.</ref> In 1980, a memorial to Russell was commissioned by a committee including the philosopher [[A. J. Ayer]]. It consists of a bust of Russell in [[Red Lion Square]] in London sculpted by Marcelle Quinton.<ref>{{Cite journal |year=1980 |title=Bertrand Russell Memorial |journal=Mind |volume=353 |page=320}}</ref>

Lady Katharine Jane Tait, Russell's daughter, founded the Bertrand Russell Society in 1974 to preserve and understand his work. It publishes the ''Bertrand Russell Society Bulletin'', holds meetings and awards prizes for scholarship, including the Bertrand Russell Society Award.<ref>{{Cite web |date=9 September 2018 |title=Bertrand Russell Society Award |url=https://bertrandrussellsociety.org/brs-award/ |access-date=11 July 2022 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910144645/https://bertrandrussellsociety.org/brs-award/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=The Bertrand Russell Society |url=https://bertrandrussellsociety.org/ |access-date=14 May 2019 |website=The Bertrand Russell Society |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910144646/https://bertrandrussellsociety.org/ |url-status=live }}</ref> She also authored several essays about her father; as well as a book, ''My Father, Bertrand Russell'', which was published in 1975.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/myfatherbertrand00tait |title=My Father, Bertrand Russell |publisher=National Library of Australia |year=1975 |isbn=978-0-15-130432-5 |access-date=28 May 2010 |url-access=registration}}</ref> All members receive ''Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies''.

For the [[sesquicentennial]] of his birth, in May 2022, [[McMaster University's]] Bertrand Russell Archive, the university's largest and most heavily used research collection, organised both a physical and virtual exhibition on Russell's anti-nuclear stance in the post-war era, [https://expo.mcmaster.ca/s/scientists-for-peace/page/scientists-for-peace-introduction ''Scientists'' ''for Peace: the Russell-Einstein Manifesto and the Pugwash Conference''], which included the earliest version of the [[Russell–Einstein Manifesto]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Lipari |first=Nicole |date=12 May 2022 |title=New exhibit celebrates 150 years of Bertrand Russell |work=Daily News |publisher=[[McMaster University]] |url=https://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/articles/new-exhibit-celebrates-150-years-of-bertrand-russell/ |access-date=18 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220512230848/https://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/articles/new-exhibit-celebrates-150-years-of-bertrand-russell/ |archive-date=12 May 2022}}</ref> The [[Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation]] held a commemoration at [[Conway Hall]] in Red Lion Square, London, on 18 May, the anniversary of his birth.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Bertrand Russell 150 {{!}} Celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Bertrand Russell |url=https://spokesmanbooks.org/product/br-150-booklet/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220517182804/https://spokesmanbooks.org/product/br-150-booklet/ |archive-date=17 May 2022 |access-date=18 May 2022 |website=[[Spokesman Books]] |date=11 May 2022 |publisher=[[Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation]]}}</ref> For its part, on the same day, ''[[La Estrella de Panamá]]'' published a biographical sketch by Francisco Díaz Montilla, who commented that "[if he] had to characterize Russell's work in one sentence [he] would say: criticism and rejection of dogmatism."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Díaz Montilla |first=Francisco |date=18 May 2022 |title=150 años con Bertrand Russell |language=es |trans-title=150 Years with Bertrand Russell |work=[[La Estrella de Panamá]] |url=https://www.laestrella.com.pa/opinion/columnistas/220518/150-anos-bertrand-russell |access-date=18 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220518153812/https://www.laestrella.com.pa/opinion/columnistas/220518/150-anos-bertrand-russell |archive-date=18 May 2022}}</ref>

Bangladesh's first leader, [[Mujibur Rahman]], named his youngest son [[Sheikh Russel]] in honour of Bertrand Russell.

==Marriages and issue==
In 1889, Russell, at 17 years of age, met the family of [[Alys Pearsall Smith]], an American [[Religious Society of Friends|Quaker]] five years his senior, who was a graduate of [[Bryn Mawr College]] near [[Philadelphia]].<ref name="Russell1967b">{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dVBpAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA72 |title=The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: 1872–1914 |publisher=Routledge |year=2000 |location=New York |page=72 |isbn=978-1-317-83504-2 |orig-date=1967 |access-date=16 July 2018 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140855/https://books.google.com/books?id=dVBpAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA72#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Monk1996"/>{{rp|p=37}} He became a friend of the Pearsall Smith family. They knew him as "Lord John's grandson" and enjoyed showing him off.<ref name="Monk1996"/>{{rp|p=48}}

He fell in love with Alys, and contrary to his grandmother's wishes, married her on 13 December 1894. Their marriage began to fall apart in 1901 when it occurred to Russell, while cycling, that he no longer loved her.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bertrand Russell |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |title=Autobiography |publisher=Psychology Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-415-18985-9 |page=150 |access-date=7 January 2016 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910140331/https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMrmmrNuEoC |url-status=live }}</ref> She asked him if he loved her, and he cruelly replied that he did not. Russell also disliked Alys's mother, finding her controlling and cruel. A lengthy period of separation began in 1911 with Russell's affair with [[Lady Ottoline Morrell]],<ref name="the Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives">{{cite journal | last=Moran | first=Margaret | title=Bertrand Russell Meets His Muse: the Impact of Lady Ottoline Morrell (1911-12) | journal=Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies | publisher=Project MUSE | volume=11 | issue=2 | date=1991-12-31 | issn=1913-8032 | doi=10.15173/russell.v11i2.1807 | doi-broken-date=1 July 2025 }}</ref> and he and Alys finally divorced in 1921 to enable Russell to remarry.<ref name="Russell2002">{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=97PesXqhNdAC&pg=PA230 |title=The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Public Years, 1914–1970 |publisher=Psychology Press |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-415-26012-1 |editor-last=Griffin |editor-first=Nicholas |editor-link=Nicholas Griffin (philosopher) |page=230 |access-date=16 July 2018 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910141003/https://books.google.com/books?id=97PesXqhNdAC&pg=PA230#v=onepage&q&f=false |url-status=live }}</ref>

During his years of separation from Alys, Russell had affairs (often simultaneous) with a number of women, including Morrell and the actress [[Lady Constance Malleson]].<ref name="private">{{Cite web |last=Kimball |first=Roger |date=September 1992 |title=Love, logic & unbearable pity: The private Bertrand Russell |url=http://newcriterion.com:81/archive/11/sept92/brussell.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061205032455/http://newcriterion.com/archive/11/sept92/brussell.htm |archive-date=5 December 2006 |access-date=15 November 2007 |website=The New Criterion |volume=11 |issue=1}}</ref> Some have suggested that at this point he had an affair with [[Vivienne Haigh-Wood]], the English governess and writer, and first wife of [[T. S. Eliot]].<ref>{{Cite ODNB|first=Ray|last=Monk|title=Russell, Bertrand Arthur William, third Earl Russell (1872–1970)|date=September 2004|url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/35875|access-date=14 March 2008|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/35875}}{{subscription required}}</ref>

In 1921, his second marriage was to Dora Winifred Black MBE (died 1986), daughter of Sir Frederick Black. Dora was six months pregnant when the couple returned to England.

This was dissolved in 1935, having produced two children:
* [[John Conrad Russell, 4th Earl Russell]] (1921–1987)
* Lady Katharine Jane Russell (1923–2021), who married Rev. Charles Tait in 1948 and [[Issue (genealogy)|had issue]]

Additionally, Russell was temporarily registered as the birth father of Dora Russell’s daughter, Harriett Ruth Barry (1930-2024), but this was reversed at some point and Harriett’s father was correctly registered as American journalist Griffin Barry. Dora Russell also gave birth to a son by Griffin Barry in 1932, Roderick Barry (1932-1983). Though the Russell marriage was an open one, the Barry children’s births led to a dissolution of the marriage and Russell divorced Dora. Russell did continue to be involved in both Barry children’s lives, though not closely.{{citation needed|date=October 2025}}

Russell's third marriage was to his student Patricia Helen Spence (d. 2004) in 1936, with the marriage producing one child:
* [[Conrad Sebastian Robert Russell, 5th Earl Russell]] (1937–2004), who became a historian and one of the leading figures in the [[Liberal Democrats (UK)|Liberal Democrat]] party.<ref name="Gallery" />

Russell's third marriage ended in divorce in 1952. He married Edith Finch in the same year. They remained married at the time of his death in 1972; Finch died in 1978.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Morris |first=Susan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=99tHEAAAQBAJ&q=debrett%27s+3rd+earl+russell |title=Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage 2019 |year=2020 |isbn=978-1999767051 |page=4218 |publisher=eBook Partnership |access-date=27 December 2021 |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910141011/https://books.google.com/books?id=99tHEAAAQBAJ&q=debrett%27s+3rd+earl+russell#v=snippet&q=debrett's%203rd%20earl%20russell&f=false |url-status=live }}</ref>

==Titles, awards and honours==
Upon his brother's death in 1931, Russell became the 3rd [[Earl Russell]] of [[Kingston Russell]], and the subsidiary title of Viscount Amberley of Amberley and of Ardsalla.<ref name = "nytimes">{{cite news|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|date=5 March 1931|title=Earl Russell Dies: British Statesman|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1931/03/05/96184774.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0|page=5}}</ref> He held both titles, and the accompanying seat in the House of Lords, until his death in 1970.

===Honours and awards===

{| class="wikitable" style="width:100%;"
! style="width:20%;"| Country
! style="width:20%;"| Date
! style="width:60%;"| Award
|-
| {{Flagu|United Kingdom}} || '''1932''' || [[De Morgan Medal]]
|-
| {{Flagu|United Kingdom}} || '''1934''' || [[Sylvester Medal]]
|-
| {{Flagu|United Kingdom}} || '''1949''' || [[Order of Merit]]
|-
| {{Flagu|Sweden}} || '''1950''' || [[Nobel Prize in Literature]]
|-
| {{Flagu|United Nations}} || '''1957''' || [[Kalinga Prize]]
|-
| {{Flagu|Israel}} || '''1963''' || [[Jerusalem Prize]]
|-
|}

===Scholastic===

{| class="wikitable" style="width:100%;"
! style="width:20%;"| Date
! style="width:40%;"| School/Association
! style="width:20%;"| Award/Position
|-
| '''1893''' || [[Trinity College, Cambridge]] || [[British undergraduate degree classification|First Class Honours]] in [[Mathematics]]
|-
| '''1894''' || [[Trinity College, Cambridge]] || [[British undergraduate degree classification|First Class Honours]] in [[Philosophy]]<ref>{{cite web |url= https://www.britannica.com/question/Where-was-Bertrand-Russell-educated |title= Where Was Bertrand Russell Educated |last=  |first=  |date=  |website= www.britannica.com |publisher=  |access-date= 6 April 2024 |quote=  |archive-date= 10 September 2024 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20240910144653/https://www.britannica.com/question/Where-was-Bertrand-Russell-educated |url-status= live }}</ref>
|-
| '''1895''' || [[Trinity College, Cambridge]] || Fellowship
|-
| '''1896''' || [[London School of Economics and Political Science]] || Lecturer
|-
| '''1899, 1901, 1910, 1915''' || [[Trinity College, Cambridge]] || Lecturer
|-
| '''1908''' || [[The Royal Society]] || Fellowship
|-
| '''1911''' || [[Aristotelian Society]] || President
|-
| '''1938''' || [[University of Chicago]] || Visiting Professor of Philosophy
|-
| '''1939''' || [[University of California at Los Angeles]] || Professor of Philosophy
|-
| '''1941-42''' || [[Barnes Foundation]] || Lecturer
|-
| '''1944-49''' || [[Trinity College, Cambridge]] || Fellowship
|-
| '''1949''' || [[Trinity College, Cambridge]] || Lifetime Fellowship<ref>{{cite web |url= https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/ |title= Bertrand Russell |last=  |first=  |date= 1995 |website= plato.stanford.edu |publisher=  |access-date= 6 April 2024 |quote=  |archive-date= 26 September 2023 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20230926044206/https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell/ |url-status= live }}</ref>
|-
|}

==Views==
{{Infobox Bertrand Russell}}

===Philosophy===
{{Main|Bertrand Russell's philosophical views}}
Russell is credited with being one of the founders of [[analytic philosophy]]. He was impressed by [[Gottfried Leibniz]] (1646–1716), and wrote on major areas of philosophy except [[aesthetics]]. He was prolific in the fields of [[metaphysics]], [[Bertrand Russell's views on philosophy#Logic and philosophy of mathematics|logic and the philosophy of mathematics]], the [[Bertrand Russell's views on philosophy#Philosophy of language|philosophy of language]], [[Bertrand Russell's views on philosophy#Ethics|ethics]] and [[Bertrand Russell's views on philosophy#Epistemology|epistemology]]. When [[Brand Blanshard]] asked Russell why he did not write on aesthetics, Russell replied that he did not know anything about it, though he hastened to add "but that is not a very good excuse, for my friends tell me it has not deterred me from writing on other subjects".<ref>Blanshard, in [[Paul Arthur Schilpp]], ed., ''The Philosophy of Brand Blanshard'', Open Court, 1980, p. 88, quoting a private letter from Russell.</ref>

On ethics, Russell wrote that he was a [[utilitarian]] in his youth, yet he later distanced himself from this view.<ref>''The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell'', London: Routledge, 2000 [London: Allen and Unwin, 1969, Vol. 1], p.&nbsp;39 ("It appeared to me obvious that the happiness of mankind should be the aim of all action, and I discovered to my surprise that there were those who thought otherwise. Belief in happiness, I found, was called Utilitarianism, and was merely one among a number of ethical theories. I adhered to it after this discovery, and was rash enough to tell my grandmother that I was a utilitarian." In a letter from 1902, in which Russell criticised utilitarianism, he wrote: "I may as well begin by confessing that for many years it seemed to me perfectly self-evident that pleasure is the only good and pain the only evil. Now, however, the opposite seems to me self-evident. This change has been brought about by what I may call moral experience." Ibid, p. 161).</ref>

For the advancement of science and protection of liberty of expression, Russell advocated [[The Will to Doubt]], the recognition that all human knowledge is at most a best guess, that one should always remember:

{{blockquote|None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error. The methods of increasing the degree of truth in our beliefs are well known; they consist in hearing all sides, trying to ascertain all the relevant facts, controlling our own bias by discussion with people who have the opposite bias, and cultivating a readiness to discard any hypothesis which has proved inadequate. These methods are practised in science, and have built up the body of scientific knowledge.

Every man of science whose outlook is truly scientific is ready to admit that what passes for scientific knowledge at the moment is sure to require correction with the progress of discovery; nevertheless, it is near enough to the truth to serve for most practical purposes, though not for all. In science, where alone something approximating to genuine knowledge is to be found, men's attitude is tentative and full of doubt.<ref name="free" />}}

===Religion===
Russell described himself in 1947 as an agnostic or an [[atheism|atheist]]: he found it difficult to determine which term to adopt, saying:{{blockquote|Therefore, in regard to the [[Twelve Olympians|Olympic gods]], speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the [[God in Christianity|Christian God]], I should, I think, take exactly the same line.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |year=1947 |title=Am I An Atheist or an Agnostic? |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Things |url=http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell8.htm |access-date=6 July 2005 |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050622001026/http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell8.htm |archive-date=22 June 2005 |url-status=dead}}: "I never know whether I should say 'Agnostic' or whether I should say 'Atheist'.... As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove (sic) that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist."</ref>}} For most of his adult life, Russell maintained religion to be little more than [[superstition]] and, despite any positive effects, largely harmful to people. He believed that religion and the religious outlook serve to impede knowledge and foster fear and dependency, and to be responsible for much of our world's wars, oppression, and misery. He was a member of the advisory council of the [[British Humanist Association]]<ref>{{Cite web |title=20th Century Humanism |url=https://humanists.uk/humanism/the-humanist-tradition/20th-century-humanism/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231206145444/https://humanists.uk/humanism/the-humanist-tradition/20th-century-humanism/ |archive-date=2023-12-06 |access-date=2024-09-15 |website=Humanists UK |language=en-GB}}</ref> and the president of Cardiff Humanists until his death.<ref>'Humanist News', March 1970{{Nonspecific|date=January 2020|reason=Journal, title, author?}}</ref>

===Society===
{{Main|Bertrand Russell's political views}}

Political and social activism occupied much of Russell's time for most of his life. Russell remained politically active almost to the end of his life, writing to and exhorting world leaders and lending his name to various causes. He was a prominent campaigner against Western intervention into the [[Vietnam War]] in the 1960s, writing essays and books, attending demonstrations, and even organising the [[Russell Tribunal]] in 1966 alongside other prominent philosophers such as [[Jean-Paul Sartre]] and [[Simone de Beauvoir]], which fed into his 1967 book ''War Crimes in Vietnam.''<ref>{{Cite web |title=War Crimes in Vietnam |url=https://nyupress.org/9780853450580/war-crimes-in-vietnam |access-date=12 May 2023 |website=NYU Press |language=en-US |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910144655/https://nyupress.org/9780853450580/war-crimes-in-vietnam/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Russell argued for a "scientific society", where war would be abolished, population growth would be limited, and prosperity would be shared.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |title=The Impact of Science on Society |publisher=New York, Columbia University Press |year=1952 |chapter=Conclusions |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/impactofscienceo0000russ |chapter-url-access=registration}}</ref> He suggested the establishment of a "single supreme world government" able to enforce peace,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |title=Which Way to Peace? ''(Part 12)'' |publisher=M. Joseph Ltd. |year=1936 |page=173}}</ref> claiming that "the only thing that will redeem mankind is co-operation".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |url=https://archive.org/details/humansocietyinet0000russ |title=Human Society in Ethics and Politics |publisher=London: G. Allen & Unwin |year=1954 |page=[https://archive.org/details/humansocietyinet0000russ/page/212 212] |url-access=registration}}</ref> He was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a [[world constitution]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Letters from Thane Read asking Helen Keller to sign the World Constitution for world peace. 1961 |url=https://www.afb.org/HelenKellerArchive?a=d&d=A-HK01-07-B149-F04-022.1.8 |access-date=1 July 2023 |website=Helen Keller Archive |publisher=American Foundation for the Blind |archive-date=3 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230703034807/https://www.afb.org/HelenKellerArchive?a=d&d=A-HK01-07-B149-F04-022.1.8 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Letter from World Constitution Coordinating Committee to Helen, enclosing current materials |url=https://www.afb.org/HelenKellerArchive?a=d&d=A-HK01-07-B154-F05-028.1.6 |access-date=3 July 2023 |website=Helen Keller Archive |publisher=American Foundation for the Blind |archive-date=3 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230703034812/https://www.afb.org/HelenKellerArchive?a=d&d=A-HK01-07-B154-F05-028.1.6 |url-status=live }}</ref> As a result, for the first time in human history, a [[World Constituent Assembly]] convened to draft and adopt the [[Constitution for the Federation of Earth]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Preparing earth constitution {{!}} Global Strategies & Solutions {{!}} The Encyclopedia of World Problems |url=http://encyclopedia.uia.org/en/strategy/193465 |url-status=dead |access-date=15 July 2023 |website=The Encyclopedia of World Problems {{!}} Union of International Associations (UIA) |archive-date=19 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230719215501/http://encyclopedia.uia.org/en/strategy/193465 }}</ref> 

Russell also expressed support for [[guild socialism]], and commented positively on several socialist thinkers and activists.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kleene, G. A. |year=1920 |title=Bertrand Russell on Socialism |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/1885165 |journal=The Quarterly Journal of Economics |volume=34 |issue=4 |pages=756–762 |doi=10.2307/1885165 |jstor=1885165 }}</ref> According to [[Jean Bricmont]] and Normand Baillargeon, "Russell was both a [[Liberalism|liberal]] and a [[Socialism|socialist]], a combination that was perfectly comprehensible in his time, but which has become almost unthinkable today. He was a liberal in that he opposed concentrations of power in all its manifestations, military, governmental, or religious, as well as the superstitious or nationalist ideas that usually serve as its justification. But he was also a socialist, even as an extension of his liberalism, because he was equally opposed to the concentrations of power stemming from the [[private ownership]] of the major [[means of production]], which therefore needed to be put under social control (which does not mean state control)."<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Bricmont |first1=Jean |last2=Norm |last3=Europe |first3=BaillargeonTopics: History Marxism Philosophy Socialism Places: Europe Soviet UnionWestern |date=1 July 2017 |title=Monthly Review {{!}} Bertrand Russell and the Socialism That Wasn't |url=https://monthlyreview.org/2017/07/01/bertrand-russell-and-the-socialism-that-wasnt/ |access-date=12 May 2023 |website=Monthly Review |language=en-US |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910144656/https://monthlyreview.org/2017/07/01/bertrand-russell-and-the-socialism-that-wasnt/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Russell was an active supporter of the [[Homosexual Law Reform Society]], being one of the signatories of [[A. E. Dyson]]'s 1958 letter to ''The Times'' calling for a change in the law regarding male homosexual practices, which were partly legalised in 1967, when Russell was still alive.<ref name="GALHA">{{Cite web |last=Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association |date=2 November 1997 |title=Lesbian and Gay Rights: The Humanist and Religious Stances |url=http://www.galha.org/briefing/lgb_rights.html |access-date=17 February 2008 |archive-date=10 June 2002 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020610084110/http://www.galha.org/briefing/lgb_rights.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>

He expressed sympathy and support for the [[Palestinians|Palestinian]] people and was critical of [[Israel]]'s actions. He wrote in 1960 that, "I think it was a mistake to establish a Jewish State in Palestine, but it would be a still greater mistake to try to get rid of it now that it exists."<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly – November 2003 |url=https://www.lehman.edu/faculty/rcarey/BRSQ/03nov.russell.htm |access-date=12 May 2023 |website=www.lehman.edu |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910144727/https://www.lehman.edu/faculty/rcarey/BRSQ/03nov.russell.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> In his final written document, read aloud in [[Cairo]] three days after his death on 31 January 1970, he condemned Israel as an aggressive [[Imperialism|imperialist]] power, which "wishes to consolidate with the least difficulty what it has already taken by violence. Every new conquest becomes the new basis of the proposed negotiation from strength, which ignores the injustice of the previous aggression." In regards to the Palestinian people and [[Palestinian refugees|refugees]], he wrote that, "No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the [[Middle East]]."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Siddiqui |first=M. S. |date=23 May 2021 |title="Bertrand Russell's Last Message" on Israel and Palestine. |url=https://www.heritagetimes.in/bertrand-russells-last-message-on-israel-and-palestine/ |access-date=12 May 2023 |website=Heritage Times |language=en-US |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910145202/https://www.heritagetimes.in/bertrand-russells-last-message-on-israel-and-palestine |url-status=live }}</ref>

Russell advocated for a [[universal basic income]]. In his 1918 book ''Roads to Freedom'', Russell wrote that "[[Anarchism]] has the advantage as regards liberty, Socialism as regards the inducement to work.&nbsp; Can we not find a method of combining these two advantages?&nbsp;It seems to me that we can. [...] Stated in more familiar terms, the plan we are advocating amounts essentially to this: that a certain small income, sufficient for necessaries, should be secured to all, whether they work or not, and that a larger income – as much larger as might be warranted by the total amount of commodities produced – should be given to those who are willing to engage in some work which the community recognizes as useful...When education is finished, no one should be compelled to work, and those who choose not to work should receive a bare livelihood and be left completely free."<ref>{{Cite web |title=A short history of the Basic Income idea {{!}} BIEN — Basic Income Earth Network |url=https://basicincome.org/history/ |access-date=12 May 2023 |website=basicincome.org |date=22 January 2015 |archive-date=3 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230103180555/https://basicincome.org/history/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

In "Reflections on My Eightieth Birthday" ("Postscript" in his ''Autobiography''), Russell wrote: "I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social. Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give wisdom at more mundane times. Social: to see in imagination the society that is to be created, where individuals grow freely, and where hate and greed and envy die because there is nothing to nourish them. These things I believe, and the world, for all its horrors, has left me unshaken".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |title=The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: 1944–1969 |publisher=Little, Brown |year=1968 |page=330}} Published separately as 'Reflections on My Eightieth Birthday' in ''Portraits from Memory''.</ref>

===Freedom of opinion and expression===
Russell supported freedom of opinion and was an opponent of both censorship and indoctrination. In 1928, he wrote: <blockquote>The fundamental argument for freedom of opinion is the doubtfulness of all our belief... when the State intervenes to ensure the indoctrination of some doctrine, it does so because there is no conclusive evidence in favour of that doctrine ... It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions make it impossible to make a living.<ref>''Skeptical Essays'', 1928, {{ISBN|978-0-415-32508-0}}</ref></blockquote> In 1957, he wrote: "'Free thought' means thinking freely ... to be worthy of the name freethinker he must be free of two things: the force of tradition and the tyranny of his own passions."<ref>Understanding History and other Essays.</ref>

===Education===
Russell has presented ideas on the possible means of control of education in case of scientific dictatorship governments, of the kind of this excerpt taken from Chapter II "General Effects of Scientific Technique" of "The Impact of Science on society":<ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |title=The Impact of Science on Society |publisher=New York, AMS Press |year=1953 |chapter=General Effects of Scientific Technique |chapter-url=https://it.scribd.com/document/558107312/The-Impact-of-Science-on-Society-by-Bertrand-Russell |access-date=10 August 2022 |archive-date=18 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230118175706/https://it.scribd.com/document/558107312/The-Impact-of-Science-on-Society-by-Bertrand-Russell |url-status=dead }}</ref>
{{blockquote|This subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship. Anaxagoras maintained that snow is black, but no one believed him. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark grey. Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen. As yet there is only one country which has succeeded in creating this politician's paradise. The social effects of scientific technique have already been many and important, and are likely to be even more noteworthy in the future. Some of these effects depend upon the political and economic character of the country concerned; others are inevitable, whatever this character may be.}}
He pushed his visionary scenarios even further into details, in Chapter III "Scientific Technique in an Oligarchy" of the same book,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |title=The Impact of Science on Society |publisher=New York, AMS Press |year=1953 |chapter=Scientific Technique in an Oligarchy |chapter-url=https://it.scribd.com/document/558107312/The-Impact-of-Science-on-Society-by-Bertrand-Russell |access-date=10 August 2022 |archive-date=18 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230118175706/https://it.scribd.com/document/558107312/The-Impact-of-Science-on-Society-by-Bertrand-Russell |url-status=dead }}</ref> stating as an example: {{blockquote| In future such failures are not likely to occur where there is dictatorship. Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.}}

==Selected works==
Below are selected Russell's works in English, sorted by year of first publication:
* 1896. ''German Social Democracy''. London: [[Longman|Longmans, Green & Co.]]<ref>{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.237125 |title=German Social Democracy |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |editor-last=Russell |editor-first=Alys |date=1896 |publisher=[[Longman|Longmans, Green & Co.]] |location=London |via=Internet Archive}}</ref>
* 1897. ''An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry''.<ref>{{Cite web |year=1897 |title=An essay on the foundations of geometry |url=https://archive.org/details/essayfoundations00russrich |website=Internet Archive |publisher=Cambridge, University press}}</ref> Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
* 1900. ''A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
* 1903. ''[[The Principles of Mathematics]]''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Principles of Mathematics |url=http://fair-use.org/bertrand-russell/the-principles-of-mathematics/ |publisher=fair-use.org |access-date=6 October 2005 |archive-date=2 July 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100702210535/http://fair-use.org/bertrand-russell/the-principles-of-mathematics/ |url-status=live }}</ref> Cambridge University Press
* 1903. ''A Free Man's Worship''.<ref>''Mysticism and Logic including A Free Man's Worship'', London : Unwin Books, 1976, {{isbn|0048240214}}</ref>
* 1905. ''[[On Denoting]]'', ''[[Mind (journal)|Mind]]'', Vol. 14. {{ISSN|0026-4423}}. Basil Blackwell
* 1910. ''Philosophical Essays''. London: Longmans, Green
* 1910–1913. ''[[Principia Mathematica]]'' (with [[Alfred North Whitehead]]).<ref>{{Cite book |url=http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=umhistmath;cc=umhistmath;view=toc;idno=AAT3201.0001.001 |title=Principia mathematica, by Alfred North Whitehead ... and Bertrand Russell. |via=umich.edu |year=2005 |access-date=11 September 2009 |archive-date=29 July 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130729204638/http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=umhistmath;cc=umhistmath;view=toc;idno=AAT3201.0001.001 |url-status=live }}</ref> 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
* 1912. ''[[The Problems of Philosophy]]''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Problems of Philosophy |url=http://www.ditext.com/russell/russell.html |publisher=ditext.com |access-date=2 August 2007 |archive-date=25 October 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051025035834/http://www.ditext.com/russell/russell.html |url-status=live }}</ref> London: Williams and Norgate
* 1914. ''Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Our Knowledge of the External World |url=https://archive.org/details/ourknowledgeofth005200mbp |website=Internet Archive |publisher=George Allen & Unwin}}</ref> Chicago and London: Open Court Publishing.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.filosofia.unimi.it/zucchi/NuoviFile/Russell(1914).pdf|title=Our Knowledge of the External World|access-date=1 April 2020|archive-date=10 September 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910141436/http://www.filosofia.unimi.it/zucchi/NuoviFile/Russell(1914).pdf|url-status=live}}</ref>
* 1916. ''Principles of Social Reconstruction''.<ref>{{Cite web |year=1916 |title=Principles of social reconstruction |url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924032577532 |website=Internet Archive}}</ref> London, George Allen and Unwin
* 1916. ''[[Why Men Fight (book)|Why Men Fight]]''. New York: The Century Co (American title of ''Principles of Social Reconstruction,'' 1916)
* 1916. ''The Policy of the Entente, 1904–1914: A Reply to Professor Gilbert Murray''.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |date=14 May 2019 |title=The Policy of the Entente 1904–1914: A Reply to Professor Gilbert Murray |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=U45rtgAACAAJ |access-date=14 May 2019 |publisher=National Labour Press |via=Google Books |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910141435/https://books.google.com/books?id=U45rtgAACAAJ |url-status=live }}</ref> Manchester: The National Labour Press
* 1916. ''Justice in War-time''. Chicago: Open Court (contains ''The Policy of the Entente, 1904-1914'' above'')'' <ref>{{Cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |title=Justice in War-time |publisher=Cosimo |year=1916 |location=U.S.A. |publication-date=2007}} {{isbn|9781605200217}}.</ref>
* 1917. ''Political Ideals''.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4776 |title=Political Ideals |via=Project Gutenberg}}</ref> New York: The Century Co.
* 1918. ''[[s:Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays|Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays]]''. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1918. ''Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism''.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/690 |title=Proposed Roads to Freedom |via=Project Gutenberg |access-date=28 August 2020 |archive-date=25 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200825140215/https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/690 |url-status=live }}</ref> London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1919. ''[[Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy]]''.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Klement |first=Kevin C. |title=Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy |url=http://people.umass.edu/klement/russell-imp.html |website=umass.edu |access-date=1 December 2010 |archive-date=12 August 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130812152838/http://people.umass.edu/klement/russell-imp.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Pfeiffer |first=G. A. |author-link=George Adam Pfeiffer |year=1920 |title=Review: ''Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy'' by Bertrand Russell |url=https://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1920-27-02/S0002-9904-1920-03365-3/S0002-9904-1920-03365-3.pdf |url-status=live |journal=[[Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society]] |volume=27 |issue=2 |pages=81–90 |doi=10.1090/s0002-9904-1920-03365-3 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/https://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1920-27-02/S0002-9904-1920-03365-3/S0002-9904-1920-03365-3.pdf |archive-date=9 October 2022 |doi-access=free}}</ref> London: George Allen & Unwin. ({{ISBN|0-415-09604-9}} for Routledge paperback)<ref>{{Cite web |year=1920 |title=Introduction to mathematical philosophy |url=https://archive.org/details/introductiontoma00russuoft |website=Internet Archive}}</ref>
* 1920. ''The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism''.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17350 |title=The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism |via=Project Gutenberg |access-date=28 August 2020 |archive-date=22 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200922162128/http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17350 |url-status=live }}</ref> London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1921. ''The Analysis of Mind''.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2529 |title=The Analysis of Mind |via=Project Gutenberg |access-date=28 August 2020 |archive-date=19 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201019214317/http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2529 |url-status=live }}</ref> London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1922. ''The Problem of China''.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13940 |title=The Problem of China |via=Project Gutenberg |access-date=28 August 2020 |archive-date=9 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200909072840/http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13940 |url-status=live }}</ref> London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1922. ''[[Free Thought and Official Propaganda]]'', delivered at South Place Institute<ref name="free" />
* 1923. ''The Prospects of Industrial Civilization'', in collaboration with Dora Russell. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1923. ''The ABC of Atoms'', London: Kegan Paul. Trench, Trubner
* 1924. ''Icarus; or, The Future of Science''. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner
* 1925. ''The ABC of Relativity''. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner; reprinted (1966) by London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1925. ''What I Believe''. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner
* 1926. ''On Education, Especially in Early Childhood''. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1927. ''[[Why I Am Not a Christian]]'',<ref>{{Cite web |title=Why I Am Not A Christian |url=http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell0.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061119081311/http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell0.htm |archive-date=19 November 2006 |publisher=positiveatheism.org}}</ref> delivered at Battersea Town Hall,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |date=1927 |title=Why I Am Not a Christian |url=https://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html |access-date=September 28, 2025}}</ref> published by London: Watts
* 1927. ''The Analysis of Matter''. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner
* 1927. ''Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell''. New York: Modern Library (reprint of earlier essays)
* 1927. ''An Outline of Philosophy''. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1928. ''Sceptical Essays''. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1929. ''[[Marriage and Morals]]''. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1930. ''The Conquest of Happiness''. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1931. ''The Scientific Outlook.''<ref>{{Cite web |year=1954 |title=The Scientific Outlook |url=https://archive.org/details/scientificoutloo030217mbp |website=Internet Archive |publisher=George Allen And Unwin Limited.}}</ref> London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1932. ''Education and the Social Order.''<ref>{{Cite web |title=Education and the Social Order |url=https://archive.org/details/EducationAndTheSocialOrder |website=Internet Archive}}</ref> London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1934. ''Freedom and Organization, 1814–1914''. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1935. ''[[In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays]]''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=In Praise of Idleness By Bertrand Russell |url=http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190822071656/http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html |archive-date=22 August 2019 |access-date=4 November 2001 |publisher=zpub.com}}</ref> London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1935. ''Religion and Science''. London: Thornton Butterworth
* 1936. ''Which Way to Peace?.'' London: Jonathan Cape
* 1937. ''The Amberley Papers: The Letters and Diaries of Lord and Lady Amberley'', with Patricia Russell, 2 vols., London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press; reprinted (1966) as ''The Amberley Papers. Bertrand Russell's Family Background'', 2 vols., London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1938. ''[[Power: A New Social Analysis]]''. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1940. ''An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth''. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.<ref>[https://archive.org/details/BertrandRussell-AnInquaryIntoMeaningAndTruth An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth] at [[archive.org]]</ref>
* 1945. ''The Bomb and Civilisation''. Published in the ''Glasgow Forward'' on 18 August 1945
* 1946. ''[[A History of Western Philosophy]] and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day''<ref>{{Cite web |title=Western Philosophy |url=https://archive.org/details/westernphilosoph035502mbp |website=Internet Archive}}</ref> New York: Simon and Schuster
* 1948. ''Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits''. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1949. ''Authority and the Individual''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Authority and the individual |url=https://archive.org/details/AuthorityAndTheIndividual |website=Internet Archive}}</ref> London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1950. ''{{vanchor|Unpopular Essays}}''.<ref>{{Cite web |year=1950 |title=Unpopular Essays |url=https://archive.org/details/unpopularessays027477mbp |website=Internet Archive |publisher=Simon and Schuster}}</ref> London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1951. ''The Impact of Science on Society''. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1951–1969. ''The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell'',<ref name="archive.org">{{Cite web |year=1951 |title=The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell 1872 1914 |url=https://archive.org/details/autobiographyofb017701mbp |website=Internet Archive |publisher=Little, Brown and company}}</ref> 3 vols., London: George Allen & Unwin. Vol. 2, 1956
* 1952. ''New Hopes for a Changing World''. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1953. ''Satan in the Suburbs and Other Stories''. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1954. ''Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories''.<ref>{{Cite web |year=1954 |title=Nightmares of Eminent Persons And Other Stories |url=https://archive.org/details/nightmaresofemin032011mbp |website=Internet Archive |publisher=The Bodley Head}}</ref> London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1954. ''Human Society in Ethics and Politics''. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1956. ''Portraits from Memory and Other Essays''.<ref>{{Cite web |year=1956 |title=Portraits From Memory And Other Essays |url=https://archive.org/details/portraitsfrommem013629mbp |website=Internet Archive |publisher=Simon and Schuster}}</ref> London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1956. ''Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901–1950'', edited by Robert C. Marsh. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1957. ''Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects'', edited by Paul Edwards. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1957. ''Understanding History and Other Essays''. New York: Philosophical Library (reprint of earlier essays)
* 1958. ''The Will to Doubt''. New York: Philosophical Library (reprint of earlier essays)
* 1959. ''Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare''.<ref>{{Cite web |year=1959 |title=Common Sense And Nuclear Warfare |url=https://archive.org/details/commonsenseandnu009377mbp |website=Internet Archive |publisher=Simon and Schuster}}</ref> London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1959. ''[[My Philosophical Development]]''.<ref>{{Cite web |year=1959 |title=My Philosophical Development |url=https://archive.org/details/myphilosophicald001521mbp |website=Internet Archive |publisher=Simon and Schuster}}</ref> London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1959. ''Wisdom of the West: A Historical Survey of Western Philosophy in Its Social and Political Setting'', edited by Paul Foulkes. London: Macdonald
* 1960. ''Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind'', Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company
* 1961. ''The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell'', edited by R. E. Egner and L. E. Denonn. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1961. ''Fact and Fiction''. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1961. ''Has Man a Future?'' London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1963. ''Essays in Skepticism''. New York: Philosophical Library (reprint of earlier essays)
* 1963. ''Unarmed Victory''. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1965. ''Legitimacy Versus Industrialism, 1814–1848''. London: George Allen & Unwin (first published as Parts I and II of ''Freedom and Organization, 1814–1914'', 1934)
* 1965. ''On the Philosophy of Science'', edited by Charles A. Fritz, Jr. Indianapolis: The Bobbs–Merrill Company
* 1967. ''War Crimes in Vietnam''. London: George Allen & Unwin
* 1969. ''Dear Bertrand Russell... A Selection of his Correspondence with the General Public 1950–1968'', edited by Barry Feinberg and Ronald Kasrils. London: George Allen and Unwin

Russell was the author of more than sixty books and over two thousand articles.<ref>Charles Pigden in Bertrand Russell, ''Russell on Ethics: Selections from the Writings of Bertrand Russell'', Routledge (2013), p.&nbsp;14</ref><ref>{{Cite book |editor-first=James C. |editor-last=Klagge |title=Wittgenstein: Biography and Philosophy |publisher=Cambridge University Press |date=2001 |page=12}}</ref> Additionally, he wrote many pamphlets, introductions, and letters to the editor. One pamphlet titled, ''<nowiki/>'I Appeal unto Caesar': The Case of the Conscientious Objectors'', ghostwritten for Margaret Hobhouse, the mother of imprisoned peace activist [[Stephen Hobhouse]], allegedly helped secure the release from prison of hundreds of [[conscientious objector]]s.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hochschild |first=Adam |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780618758289/page/270 |title=To end all wars: a story of loyalty and rebellion, 1914–1918 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |year=2011 |isbn=978-0-618-75828-9 |location=Boston |pages=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780618758289/page/270 270–272]}}</ref>

His works can be found in anthologies and collections, including ''The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell'', which [[McMaster University]] began publishing in 1983. By March 2017, this collection of his shorter and previously unpublished works included 18 volumes,<ref>{{Cite web |date=6 March 2017 |title=McMaster University: The Bertrand Russell Research Centre |url=https://russell.humanities.mcmaster.ca/brworks.htm |access-date=11 October 2019 |website=Russell.humanities.mcmaster.ca |archive-date=1 July 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200701202421/https://russell.humanities.mcmaster.ca/brworks.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref> and several more are in progress. A bibliography in three additional volumes catalogues his publications. The Russell Archives held by McMaster's [[William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections]] possess over 40,000 of his letters.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Bertrand Russell Archives Catalogue Entry and Research System |url=https://bracers.mcmaster.ca/ |access-date=5 February 2016 |website=McMaster University Library |publisher=The William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections |archive-date=10 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240910144704/https://bracers.mcmaster.ca/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

==Arms==
{{Emblem table
| image = Coat of arms of Bertrand Russell, 3rd Earl Russell.svg
| imagesize = 250px
| crest = A goat statant argent, armed and unguled or.
| escutcheon = Argent, a lion rampant gules, on a chief sable, three escallops of the field, over the centre escallop a mullet.
| supporters = Dexter, a lion gules; sinister, an heraldic antelope gules, armed, unguled, tufted, ducally gorged and chained, the chain reflexed over the back or; each supporter charged on the shoulder with a mullet argent.
| motto = ''Che sara sara'' (What must be must be).
| orders = The Order of Merit (OM).<ref>{{cite book |title=Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage |pages=1263 |year=1899 |URL=https://ukga.org/browse.php?action=ViewRec&DB=33&bookID=224&pagecount=1403}}</ref>
}}

==See also==
{{cols}}
* [[Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club]]
* [[Criticism of Jesus]]
* [[Joseph Conrad#Impressions|Joseph Conrad]] (Russell's impression)
* [[List of peace activists]]
* [[List of pioneers in computer science]]
* ''[[Logicomix]]'', a graphic novel about the foundational quest in mathematics, the narrator of the story being Bertrand Russell and with his life as the main storyline
* [[Information Research Department]]
* [[Type theory]]
* [[Type system]]
{{colend}}

== Notes ==
{{Notelist}}

==References==
{{Citation style|reason=Citation styles are inconsistent, a mix of CS1, plain text, and minimally-formatted links, sometimes with webarchive templates|date=September 2023}}

===Citations===
{{Reflist}}

=== General and cited sources ===
==== Primary sources ====
* 1900, ''Sur la logique des relations avec des applications à la théorie des séries'', ''Rivista di matematica 7'': 115–148.
* 1901, ''On the Notion of Order'', ''Mind (n.s.) 10'': 35–51.
* 1902, (with [[Alfred North Whitehead]]), ''On Cardinal Numbers'', ''American Journal of Mathematics 24'': 367–384.
* 1948, BBC Reith Lectures: Authority and the Individual A series of six radio lectures broadcast on the [[BBC Home Service]] in December 1948.

==== Secondary sources ====
* John Newsome Crossley. ''A Note on Cantor's Theorem and Russell's Paradox'', ''Australian Journal of Philosophy'' 51, 1973, 70–71.
* [[Ivor Grattan-Guinness]]. ''The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870–1940''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
* Alan Ryan. ''Bertrand Russell: A Political Life'', New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.

==Further reading==
* {{cite book|last=Russell|first=Bertrand|author-link=Political views of Bertrand Russell#Eugenics|title=Icarus, or, The future of science|date=1924|publisher= E.P. Dutton & Co.|location=New York|url=https://archive.org/download/icarusorfutureof00russ/icarusorfutureof00russ.pdf}}

=== Books about Russell's philosophy ===
* [[A. J. Ayer|Alfred Jules Ayer]]. ''Russell'', London: Fontana, 1972. {{isbn|0-00-632965-9}}. A lucid summary exposition of Russell's thought.
* Elizabeth Ramsden Eames. ''Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge'', London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969. {{oclc|488496910}}. A clear description of Russell's philosophical development.
* [[Celia Green]]. ''The Lost Cause: Causation and the Mind-Body Problem'', Oxford: Oxford Forum, 2003. {{isbn|0-9536772-1-4}} Contains a sympathetic analysis of Russell's views on [[causality]].
* [[A. C. Grayling]]. ''Russell: A Very Short Introduction'', Oxford University Press, 2002.
* [[Nicholas Griffin (philosopher)|Nicholas Griffin]]. ''Russell's Idealist Apprenticeship'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
* A. D. Irvine, ed. ''Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments'', 4 volumes, London: Routledge, 1999. Consists of essays on Russell's work by many distinguished philosophers.
* Michael K. Potter. ''Bertrand Russell's Ethics'', Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum, 2006. A clear and accessible explanation of Russell's moral philosophy.
* [[Paul Arthur Schilpp]], ed. ''The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell'', Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University, 1944.
* John Slater. ''Bertrand Russell'', Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1994.

=== Biographical books ===
* A. J. Ayer. ''[[iarchive:bertrandrussell00ayer/page/n9/mode/2up|Bertrand Russell]]'', New York: Viking Press, 1972, reprint ed. London: University of Chicago Press, 1988, {{isbn|0-226-03343-0}}
* Andrew Brink. ''Bertrand Russell: A Psychobiography of a Moralist'', Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, Inc., 1989, {{isbn|0-391-03600-9}}
* [[Ronald W. Clark]]. ''The Life of Bertrand Russell'', London: Jonathan Cape, 1975, {{isbn|0-394-49059-2}}
* Ronald W. Clark. ''Bertrand Russell and His World'', London: Thames & Hudson, 1981, {{isbn|0-500-13070-1}}
* [[Rupert Crawshay-Williams]]. ''Russell Remembered'', London: Oxford University Press, 1970. Written by a close friend of Russell's
* [[John Lewis (philosopher)|John Lewis]]. ''[https://archive.org/details/bertrandrussellphilosopherhumanist Bertrand Russell: Philosopher and Humanist]'', London: Lawerence & Wishart, 1968
* [[Ray Monk]]. ''Bertrand Russell: Mathematics: Dreams and Nightmares'', London: Phoenix, 1997, {{isbn|0-7538-0190-6}}
* Ray Monk. ''Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude, 1872–1920'' Vol. I, New York: Routledge, 1997, {{isbn|0-09-973131-2}}
* Ray Monk. ''Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921–1970'' Vol. II, New York: Routledge, 2001, {{isbn|0-09-927275-X}}
* Caroline Moorehead. ''Bertrand Russell: A Life'', New York: Viking, 1993, {{isbn|0-670-85008-X}}
* [[George Santayana]]. "Bertrand Russell", in ''Selected Writings of George Santayana'', Norman Henfrey (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, I, 1968, pp.&nbsp;326–329
* Peter Stone et al. ''[https://vernonpress.com/title?id=219 Bertrand Russell's Life and Legacy]''. Wilmington: Vernon Press, 2017.
* [[Katharine Tait]]. ''My Father Bertrand Russell'', New York: Thoemmes Press, 1975
* [[Alan Wood (author)|Alan Wood]], ''[https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.114739 Bertrand Russell: The Passionate Sceptic]'', London: George Allen & Unwin, 1957.

==External links==
{{Sister project links |voy=no|wikt=no|commons=Category:Bertrand Russell|b=no|n=no|q=Bertrand Russell|s=Author:Bertrand Russell|v=no |species=no }}
* {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/bertrand-russell}}
* {{Gutenberg author |id=355|name=Bertrand Russell}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Bertrand Russell |sopt=t}}
* {{BHL author|2254}}
* {{Librivox author |id=1508}}
* {{Cite IEP|url-id=russ-log|title=Bertrand Russell's Logic}}
* [https://bertrandrussellsociety.org/ The Bertrand Russell Society]
* [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04qgxlv BBC ''Face to Face'' interview] with Bertrand Russell and [[John Freeman (British politician)|John Freeman]], broadcast 4 March 1959
* {{Nobelprize}} including the Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1950 "What Desires Are Politically Important?"
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20220518083006/https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0017cfb Interview with Ray Monk] at [[Today (BBC Radio 4)|''Today'']], 18 May 2022 (from 2:58:35)

{{S-start}}
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{{s-bef|before=[[Frank Russell, 2nd Earl Russell|Frank Russell]]}}
{{s-ttl|title=[[Earl Russell]]|years=1931–1970}}
{{s-aft|after=[[John Russell, 4th Earl Russell|John Russell]]}}
{{S-end}}

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