Bertrand Russell Quotes

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

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

Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.

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

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

It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won`t go.

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

The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection.

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

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

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.

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

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.

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

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

In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.

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

The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.

A stupid man`s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.

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 paradise in a few years.

Passive acceptance of the teacher`s wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position.

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

No one gossips about other people`s secret virtues.

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.

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

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.

All movements go too far.

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.

This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.

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

We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach.

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.

Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God, or with mystic insight, or with any of the matters with which the more elevated and spiritual moralists are co

With the introduction of agriculture mankind entered upon a long period of meanness, misery, and madness, from which they are only now being freed by the beneficent operation of the machine.

Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed.

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

Male superiority in former days was easily demonstrated, because if a woman questioned her husband`s he could beat her. From superiority in this respect others were thought to follow. Men were more reasonable than women, more inventive, less swayed b

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

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

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

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.

The commonest objection to birth control is that it is against nature.

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

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

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don`t know.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a wide-spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible

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

By self-interest, Man has become gregarious, but in instinct he has remained to a great extent solitary; hence the need of religion and morality to reinforce self-interest

Civilized life has altogether grown too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide a harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting

The need for prostitution arises from the fact that many men are either unmarried or away from their wives on journeys, that such men are not content to remain continent, and that in a conventionally virtuous community they do not find respectable women.

We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach.

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate

What hunger is in relation to food, zest is in relation to life

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

The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic.

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

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

There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.

When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also add that some things are more nearly certain than others

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

Sin is geographical.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.