Bertrand Russell quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Bertrand Russell on Wise Famous Quotes.

Galileo and Kepler had "dangerous thoughts" (as they are called in Japan), and so have the most intelligent men of our own day.

Science, by itself cannot, supply us with an ethic.

One's work is never so bad as it appears on bad days, nor so good as it appears on good days.

What vanity needs for its satisfaction is glory, and it's easy to have glory without power.

In Labor movements generally, success through violence can hardly be expected except in circumstances where success without violence is attainable.

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

a vast collection of electric charges in violent motion.

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

Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety.

Right conduct can never, except by some rare accident, be promoted by ignorance or hindered by knowledge.

Neither acquiescence in skepticism nor acquiescence in dogma is what education should produce.

Love is a slippery eel that bites like hell

Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion go hand in hand.

A fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic institutions impossible

The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a product of civilization and education.

Much of the most important evils that mankind have to consider are those which they inflict upon each other through stupidity or malevolence or both.

I don't like the spirit of socialism - I think freedom is the basis of everything.

A good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times make it almost seem like a live teacher.

The essence of education is that it is a change effected in the organism to satisfy the operator.

A certain amount of boredom is ... essential to a happy life

The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading

It is not my prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.

We love our habits more than our income, often more than our life.

Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens.

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

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

The free intellect is the chief engine of human progress.

Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?

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

When the journey from means to end is not too long, the means themselves are enjoyed if the end is ardently desired.

Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.

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

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

Artists are on the average less happy than men of science.

The Stoic assures us that what is happening now will happen over and over again. [If so, Providende would] ultimately grow weary through despair.

Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness.

A European who goes to New York and Chicago sees the future ... when he goes to Asia he sees the past.

In considering irregular appearances, there are certain very natural mistakes which must be avoided.

And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence

Orthodoxy is the death of intelligence.

Any philosophy worth taking seriously would have to be built upon a firm foundation of unyielding despair.

The secrets to happiness include enterprise, exploration of one's interests and the overcoming of obstacles.

All knowledge, we find, must be built up upon our instinctive beliefs, and if these are rejected, nothing is left.

What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.

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

Every housemaid expects at least once a week as much excitement as would have lasted a Jane Austen heroine throughout a whole novel.

Christianity offers reasons for not fearing death or the universe, and in so doing it fails to teach adequately the virtue of courage.

Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness.

For the learning of every virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgment the best discipline is philosophy.

Mankind is divided into two classes: those who, being artificial, praise nature, and those who, being natural, praise art.

Reason may be a small force, but it is constant, and works always in one direction, while the forces of unreason destroy one another in futile strife.

We love those who hate our enemies, and if we had no enemies there would be very few people whom we should love.

I resolved from the beginning of my quest that I would not be misled by sentiment and desire into beliefs for which there was no good evidence.

What science cannot tell us, mankind cannot know.

It is curious that Mill makes very little mention of the police as a danger to liberty. In our day they are its worst enemy ...

In a wise community a wise man would not seem foolish!

The momentary state of science that may change tomorrow ...

What is the use of making everybody rich if the rich themselves are miserable?

Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent

Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.

Diversity is essential to happiness and in Utopia there is hardly any. This is a defect in all planned social systems.

Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.

Is the set of all sets which are not members of themselves a member of itself?

The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.

Of all the studies by which men acquire citizenship of the intellectual commonwealth, no single one is so indispensable as the study of the past.

Truth is for the gods; from our human point of view, it is an ideal, towards which we can approximate, but which we cannot hope to reach.

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.

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

If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation do you prefer the grain to the vote?

One of the troubles about vanity is that it grows with what it feeds on. The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about.

Dont let the old break you; let the love make you

Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.

A million million years gives us some time to prepare for the end ... let us make the best of it.

Shakespeare ... If he does not give you delight, you had better ignore him [if you can].

The atomists , unlike Socrates , Plato , and Aristotle , sought to explain the world without introducing the notion of purpose or final cause.

If the State does not acquire supremacy over [vast private] enterprises, it becomes their puppet, and they become the real State.

Human nature being what it is, people will insist upon getting some pleasure out of life.

Every sane and sensible and quiet thing we do is absolutely ignored by the press.

Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful; therefore the worse they are performed, the better.

As for earthquakes, though they were still formidable, they were so interesting that men of science could hardly regret them.

Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion.

Change is one thing, progress is another.

Most people would rather die than think and many of them do!

When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

A man cannot possibly be at peace with others until he has learned to be at peace with himself.

Frege has the merit of ... finding a third assertion by recognising the world of logic which is neither mental nor physical.

True happiness for human beings is possible only to those who develop their godlike potentialities to the utmost.

I do not think there can be any defense for the view that knowledge is ever undesirable.

It's coexistence or no existence.

No satisfaction based upon self-deception is solid.

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

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

When I was a child ... Only virtue was prized, virtue at the expense of intellect, health, happiness, and every mundane good.

Boys and young men acquire readily the moral sentiments of their social milieu, whatever these sentiments may be.

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

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

No opinion has ever been too errant to become a creed.

The legacy of Greece to Western philosophy is Western philosophy.

Only those who slavishly worship success can think that effectiveness is admirable without regard to what is effected.