Bertrand Russell Quotes

Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason. Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety.

The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.

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

Organized people are just too lazy to look for things

A smile happens in a flash, but its memory can last a lifetime.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress.

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

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

To realize the unimportance of time is the gate to wisdom.

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

True happiness for human beings is possible only to those who develop their godlike potentialities to the utmost.

How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?

When the state intervenes to insure the indoctrination of some doctrine, it does so because there is no conclusive evidence in favor of that doctrine.

The human race may well become extinct before the end of the century. Speaking as a mathematician, I should say the odds are about three to one against survival.

Common sense, however it tries, cannot avoid being surprised from time to time.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

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.

Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent

No man can be a good teacher unless he has feelings of warm affection toward his pupils and a genuine desire to impart to them what he believes to be of value.

A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.

What will be the good of the conquest of leisure and health, if no one remembers how to use them?

Ants and savages put strangers to death.

The immense majority of intellectually eminent men disbelieve in the Christian religion, but they conceal the fact in public, because they are afraid of losing their incomes.

In a just world, there would be no possibility of 'charity'.

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.

The best practical advice I can give to the present generation is to practice the virtue which the Christians call love.

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.

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty-a beauty cold and austere ... yet sublimely pure and capable of stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.

Dread of disaster makes everybody act in the very way that increases the disaster.

Calculus required continuity, and continuity was supposed to require the infinitely little; but nobody could discover what the infinitely little might be.

The true spirit of delight...is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

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.

I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.

Mankind is divided into two classes: those who, being artificial, praise nature, and those who, being natural, praise art.

Science, by itself, cannot supply us with an ethic. It can show us how to achieve a given end, and it may show us that some ends cannot be achieved.

The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

Herd pressure is to be judged by two things: first, its intensity, and second, its direction.

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.

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.

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

The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.

I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out.

RELIGION: A set of beliefs held as dogmas, dominating the conduct of life, going beyond or contrary to evidence, and inculcated by methods which are emotional or authoritarian, not intellectual.

I don't like the spirit of socialism - I think freedom is the basis of everything.

I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds.

Unless a man has been taught what to do with success after getting it, the achievement of it must inevitably leave him a prey to boredom.

I am firm; YOU are obstinate; HE is a pig-headed fool.

Unrestricted nationalism is, in the long run, incompatible with world peace.

Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.