"At the age of eighteen ... I read Mill's Autobiography, where I found a sentence to the effect that his father taught him that the question "Who made me?" cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question "Who made God?". This led me to abandon the "First Cause" argument, and to become an atheist. Throughout the long period of religious doubt, I had been rendered very unhappy by the gradual loss of belief, but when the process was completed, I found to my surprise that I was quite glad to be done with the whole subject."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Ch. 2: Adolescence, p. 36
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_Bertrand_Russell
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell
1967 – 1969
52 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell →
Related Quotes
"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowled…"
"At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. This was one of the great events of my life, as da…"
"I remember the precise moment, one day in 1894, as I was walking along Trinity Lane, when I saw in a flash (or though…"
"I once devised a test question which I put to many people to discover whether they were pessimists. The question was:…"
"Keynes's intellect was the sharpest and clearest that I have ever known. When I argued with him, I felt that I took m…"
"I remember a cold, bright day in early spring [1895] when I walked by myself in the Tiergarten, and made projects of …"
"Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradual…"
"Suddenly the ground seemed to give way beneath me, and I found myself in quite another region. Within five minutes I …"
"At the end of those five minutes, I had become a completely different person. For a time, a sort of mystic illuminati…"
"Through the long years  I sought peace, I found ecstasy, I found anguish,  I found madness, I found lonelin…"