Bertrand Russell Quotes

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

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

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

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

An Honest politician will not be tolerated by a democracy unless he is very stupid ... because only a very stupid man can honestly share the prejudices of more than half the nation.

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.

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.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

Cruel men believe in a cruel god and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly god, and they would be kindly in any case.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

Grasshopper always wrong in argument with chicken.

More important than the curriculum is the question of the methods of teaching and the spirit in which the teaching is given

I believe four ingredients are necessary for happiness: health, warm personal relations, sufficient means to keep you from want, and successful work.

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

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

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

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

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

A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.

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.

You must believe that you can help bring about a better world.

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.

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

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.

To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.

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

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.

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

Love should be a tree whose roots are deep in the earth, but whose branches extend into heaven.

The problem with the wise is they are so filled with doubts while the dull are so certain.

There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.

Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable, and praised when they are not praiseworthy.

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.

Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics.

The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts - the less you know the hotter you get.

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 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.

It's coexistence or no existence.

Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.

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.

Every great idea starts out as a blasphemy.

By self-interest, Man has become gregarious, but in instinct he has remained to a great extent solitary; hence the need of religion and morality to reinforce self-interest.

Obviousness is always the enemy of correctness.

Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.

A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.

People seem good while they are oppressed, but they only wish to become oppressors in their turn: life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.

I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious.

No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate?