Quotes by
Bertrand Russell |
1872-1970 , British philosopher
British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. In 1950, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature. | 77 quotes | 6,195 visits |
Quotations
| • | The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. 27 |
| • | Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. 19 |
| • | Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. 5 |
| • | Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate. 3 |
| • | Either Man will abolish war, or war will abolish Man. 2 |
| • | The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics. 2 |
| • | It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion. 2 |
| • | Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the government. 2 |
| • | 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. 2 |
| • | The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation. 2 |
| • | In all affairs –love, religion, politics, or business– it's a healthy idea, now and then, to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted. 1 |
| • | The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution. 1 |
| • | There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire –poison and antidote. 1 |
| • | If you're certain, you're certainly wrong, because nothing deserves certainty. 1 |
| • | The pursuit of philosophy is founded on the belief that knowledge is good, even if what is known is painful. 1 |
| • | Plotinus is both an end and a beginning: an end as regards the Greeks, a beginning as regards Christendom. 1 |
| • | Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination. 1 |
| • | Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos. 1 |
| • | The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich. 1 |
| • | Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. 1 |
| • | Drunkenness is temporary suicide. 1 |
| • | A European who goes to New York and Chicago sees the future... when he goes to Asia he sees the past. 1 |
| • | Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day. 1 |
| • | There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. 1 |
| • | The hopes which inspire communism are, in the main, as admirable as those instilled by the Sermon on the Mount, but they are held as fanatically and are as likely to do as much harm. 1 |
| • | Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover. 1 |
| • | Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty –a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture. 1 |
| • | Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it. 1 |
| • | 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 the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards. 1 |
| • | There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts. 1 |
| • | It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this. 1 |
| • | No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues. 1 |
| • | Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. 1 |
| • | The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn. 1 |
| • | There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it. 1 |
| • | To realize the unimportance of time is the gate to wisdom. 1 |
| • | Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give. 1 |
| • | Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. 1 |
| • | When considering marriage one should ask oneself this question; “will I be able to talk with this person into old age?” Everything else is transitory, the most time is spent in conversation. 1 |
| • | Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame. 1 |
| • | Television allows thousands of people to laugh at the same joke and still remain alone. 1 |
| • | Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution. 1 |
| • | We must be skeptical even of our skepticism. 1 |
| • | Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons. 1 |
| • | So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. 1 |
| • | Every great idea starts out as a blasphemy. 1 |
| • | I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: “The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.” In these words he epitomized the history of the human race. 1 |
| • | A smile happens in a flash, but its memory can last a lifetime. 1 |
| • | Love should be a tree whose roots are deep in the earth, but whose branches extend into heaven. 1 |
| • | Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. 1 |
| • | Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim. 1 |
| • | Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality. 1 |
| • | 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? 1 |
| • | One of the most powerful of all our passions is the desire to be admired and respected. 1 |
| • | My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter. 1 |
| • | Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know. 1 |
| • | One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny. 1 |
| • | I believe four ingredients are necessary for happiness: health, warm personal relations, sufficient means to keep you from want, and successful work. 1 |
| • | 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. 1 |
| • | Anything you're good at contributes to happiness. 1 |
| • | 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. 1 |
| • | Beware the man of the single book. (the Bible) 1 |
| • | No great achievement is possible without persistent work. 1 |
| • | Most human beings, though in varying degrees, desire to control, not only their own lives but also the lives of others. 1 |
| • | One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. 1 |
| • | 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. 1 |
| • | Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that is happiness. 1 |
| • | Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling? 1 |
| • | War doesn't determine who's right, it determines who's left. 1 |
| • | Next to worry probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy. 1 |
| • | I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong. 1 |
| • | The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible. 1 |
| • | Faith: a firm belief for which there is no evidence. 1 |
| • | Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. 1 |
| • | The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. 1 |
| • | The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. 1 |
| • | Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education. 1 |
