Bertrand Russell quotes

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.

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.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

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 sex.

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.

I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

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.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

The pleasure of work is open to anyone who can develop some specialised skill, provided that he can get satisfaction from the exercise of his skill without demanding universal applause.

I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

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.

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

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.

Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.

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.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

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

Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

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.

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.

Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.

Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

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.

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 sex.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

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.

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.

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.

The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life, which is impossible to the pure egoist.

Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.

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

The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.

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.

If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

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.

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.

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

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 a paradise in a few years.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

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 sex.

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

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.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.

The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.

Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

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

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

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.

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

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.

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.

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

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

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.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one.

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

None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

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.

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.

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.

Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

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.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.