Bertrand Russell Quotes

“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”
― Bertrand Russell

“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”― Bertrand Russell

“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.”― Bertrand Russell

“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”― Bertrand Russell

“My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because 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

“When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.”
― Bertrand Russell

“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, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.”― Bertrand Russell

“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”― 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

“The secret of happiness is this: let your interest be as wide as possible and let your reactions to the things and persons who interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile. ”― Bertrand Russell

“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.”― Bertrand Russell

“What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.”
― Bertrand Russell

“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.”― Bertrand Russell

“It is essential to happiness that our way of living should spring from our own deep impulses and not from the accidental tastes and desires of those who happen to be our neighbors, or even our relations.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Religion is based primarily upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly as the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.”― Bertrand Russell

“A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.”― Bertrand Russell

“I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. ”― Bertrand Russell

“Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it.”― Bertrand Russell

“There was a footpath leading across fields to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics.”― Betrand Russell

“It seems to me a fundamental dishonesty, and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it’s useful and not because you think it’s true.”― Bertrand Russell

“The use of self control is like the use of brakes on train. It is useful when you find yourself in wrong direction but merely harmful when the direction is right”― Bertrand Russell

“It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.”― Bertrand Russell

“I must, before I die, find some way to say the essential thing that is in me, that I have never said yet — a thing that is not love or hate or pity or scorn, but the very breath of life, fierce and coming from far away, bringing into human life the vastness and the fearful passionless force of non-human things.”― Bertrand Russell

“Boredom is therefore a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.”― Bertrand Russell

“I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.”― Bertrand Russell

“I say people who feel they must have a faith or religion in order to face life are showing a kind of cowardice, which in any other sphere would be considered contemptible. But when it is in the religious sphere it is thought admirable, and I cannot admire cowardice whatever sphere it is in.”― Bertrand Russell

“If we were all given by magic the power to read each other’s thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be almost all friendships would be dissolved; the second effect, however, might be excellent, for a world without any friends would be felt to be intolerable, and we should learn to like each other without needing a veil of illusion to conceal from ourselves that we did not think each other absolutely perfect.”― Bertrand Russell

“Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?”
― Bertrand Russell

“Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought of duty. To say that it is your duty to love so-and-so is the surest way to cause you to hate him of her.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Science can teach us, and I think our hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supporters, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make the world a fit place to live.”― Bertrand Russell

“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.”
― Bertrand Russell

“Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.”― Bertrand Russell

“Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.”― Bertrand Russell

“The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.”― Bertrand Russell

“I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man’s place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.”― Bertrand Russell

“As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.”― Bertrand Russell

“We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.”― Bertrand Russell

“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 habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. 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.”― Bertrand Russell

“I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.”― Bertrand Russell

“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.”― Bertrand Russell

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”― Bertrand Russell

“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”
― Bertrand Russell

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.”― Bertrand Russell

“It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”― Bertrand Russell

“Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.”― Bertrand Russell

“The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.”
― Betrand 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. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.”― Bertrand Russell

“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.”― Bertrand Russell

“Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.”
― Bertrand Russell

“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. ”― Bertrand Russell

“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.”
― Bertrand Russell

“To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.”― Bertrand Russell

“Your writing is never as good as you hoped; but never as bad as you feared.”― Bertrand Russell

“Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.”― Bertrand Russell

“Patience and boredom are closely related. Boredom, a certain kind of boredom, is really impatience. You don’t like the way things are, they aren’t interesting enough for you, so you decide- and boredom is a decision-that you are bored.”― bertrand russell

“Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives’ mouths.”― Bertrand Russell

“The world that I should wish to see would be one freed from the virulence of group hostilities and capable of realizing that happiness for all is to be derived rather from co-operation than from strife. I should wish to see a world in which education aimed at mental freedom rather than imprisoning the minds of the young in rigid armor of dogma calculated to protect them through life against the shafts of impartial evidence.”― Bertrand Russell

“A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.”― Bertrand Russell

“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.”― Bertrand Russell

“One of the most powerful of all our passions is the desire to be admired and respected.”― Bertrand Russell

“Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.”
― Bertrand Russell

“The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so; at other times he thinks about other things, or, if it is night, about nothing at all.”― Bertrand Russell

“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.”― Bertrand Russell

“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.”― Bertrand Russell

“Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possiblities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what the may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familar things in an unfamilar aspect”
― Bertrand Russell

“No man treats a motorcar as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behavior to sin; he does not say, ‘You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.’ He attempts to find out what is wrong and to set it right.”― Bertrand Russell

“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.”― Bertrand Russell

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

“If throughout your life you abstain from murder, theft, fornication, perjury, blasphemy, and disrespect toward your parents, church, and your king, you are conventionally held to deserve moral admiration even if you have never done a single kind, generous or useful action. This very inadequate notion of virtue is an outcome of taboo morality, and has done untold harm.”― Bertrand Russell

“The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.”
― Bertrand Russell

“I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in s3x.”
― Bertrand Russell

“[T]he infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.”― Bertrand Russell

“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 widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”― Bertrand Russell

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

“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.”― Bertrand Russell

“To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.”― Bertrand Russell

“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.”― 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 fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already 3-parts dead.”― Bertrand Russell

“There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”― Bertrand Russell

“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”― Bertrand Russell

“The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.”― Bertrand Russell

“Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.”― Bertrand Russell

“Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country.”― Bertrand Russell

“Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.”― Bertrand Russell

“To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”― Bertrand Russell

“Anything you’re good at contributes to happiness.”― Bertrand Russell

“Sin is geographical.”― Bertrand Russell

“Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”― Bertrand Russell

“Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.”― Bertrand Russell

“Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons”― Bertrand Russell

“Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.”― Bertrand Russell

“Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.”― Bertrand Russell

“Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.”― Bertrand Russell

“Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness.”― Bertrand Russell

“Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know”― Bertrand Russell

“The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge”― Bertrand Russell

“Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people’s.”― Bertrand Russell

“No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.”― Bertrand Russell

“It’s easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.”― Bertrand Russell