Bertrand Russell Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings 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.
In Labor movements generally, success through violence can hardly be expected except in circumstances where success without violence is attainable.
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.
Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion go hand in hand.
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.
A good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times make it almost seem like a live teacher.
It is not my prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.
It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 ...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.
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.
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
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.