Bertrand Russell Quotes

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The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.

Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Sin is geographical.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and start From the slightest pain or equal foe.

None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction.

I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.

It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

All movements go too far.

The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.

Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.

Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.

A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.

Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.

The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.

Liberty is the right to do what I like; license, the right to do what you like.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.

Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.

Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.

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