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Bertrand Russell
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.
Bertrand Russell
Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.
Bertrand Russell
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
Bertrand Russell
Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.
Bertrand Russell
Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
Bertrand Russell
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.
Bertrand Russell
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.
Bertrand Russell
Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.
Bertrand Russell
No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
Bertrand Russell
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?
Bertrand Russell
None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.
Bertrand Russell
Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
Bertrand Russell
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
Bertrand Russell
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
Bertrand Russell
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.
Bertrand Russell
Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.
Bertrand Russell
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
Bertrand Russell
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.
Bertrand Russell
Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.
Bertrand Russell
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.
Bertrand Russell
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.
Bertrand Russell
Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.
Bertrand Russell
Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.
Bertrand Russell
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
Bertrand Russell
Sin is geographical.
Bertrand Russell
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
Bertrand Russell
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.
Bertrand Russell
The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.
Bertrand Russell
The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.
Bertrand Russell
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
Bertrand Russell
The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.
Bertrand Russell
The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
Bertrand Russell
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
Bertrand Russell
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
Bertrand Russell
The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.
Bertrand Russell
The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
Bertrand Russell
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.
Bertrand Russell
The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.
Bertrand Russell
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
Bertrand Russell
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.
Bertrand Russell
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.
Bertrand Russell
The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
Bertrand Russell
The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.
Bertrand Russell
The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.
Bertrand Russell
The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
Bertrand Russell
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
Bertrand Russell
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.
Bertrand Russell
The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.
Bertrand Russell
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell
The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Bertrand Russell
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
Bertrand Russell
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.
Bertrand Russell
There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.
Bertrand Russell
Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.
Bertrand Russell
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.
Bertrand Russell
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.
Bertrand Russell
To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
Bertrand Russell
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
Bertrand Russell
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Bertrand Russell
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
Bertrand Russell
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.
Bertrand Russell
To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.
Bertrand Russell
War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
Bertrand Russell
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
Bertrand Russell
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
Bertrand Russell
When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.
Bertrand Russell
Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?
Bertrand Russell
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.
Bertrand Russell
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.
Bertrand Russell
