Bertrand Russell Quotes

The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we live.

Reason may be a small force, but it is constant, and works always in one direction, while the forces of unreason destroy one another in futile strife.

The very best proof that something can be done is that someone has already done it.

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.

Scientific societies are as yet in their infancy. It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished.

It would now be technically possible to unify the world, abolish war and poverty altogether, if men desired their own happiness more than the misery of their enemies.

The question of "unreality"is a very important one. Misled by grammar, the great majority of those logicians who have dealt with this question have dealt with it on mistaken lines. They have regarded grammatical form as a surer guide in analysis than, in fact, it is. And they have not known what differences in grammatical form are important.

The time has come, or is about to come, when only large-scale civil disobedience, which should be nonviolent, can save the populations from the universal death which their governments are preparing for them.

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

Whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.

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.

Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts.

Uncertainty in the pressure of vivid hopes and fears is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.

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

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.

I am as drunk as a lord, but then, I am one, so what does it matter ?

The white tails of rabbits, according to some theologians, have a purpose, namely to make it easier for sportsmen to shoot them.

Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, the chief glory of man.

One of the chief triumphs of modern mathematics consists in having discovered what mathematics really is.

The key to happiness is accepting one unpleasant reality every day.

Science, in its ultimate ideal, consists of a set of propositions arranged in a hierarchy, the lowest level of the hierarchy being concerned with particular facts, and the highest with some general law, governing everything in the universe. The various levels in the hierarchy have a two-fold logical connection, travelling one up, one down; the upward connection proceeds by induction, the downward by deduction.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

I am paid by the word, so I always write the shortest words possible.

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

To think I have spent my life on absolute muck.

Freedom in education has many aspects. There is first of all freedom to learn or not to learn. Then there is freedom as to what to learn. And in later education there is freedom of opinion.

Meantime, the world in which we exist has other aims. But it will pass away, burnt up in the fire of its own hot passions; and from its ashes will spring a new and younger world, full of fresh hope, woth the light of morning in its eyes.

Broadly speaking, we are in the middle of a race between human skill as a means and human folly as an end.

The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple; I should say: "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.

Whether science-and indeed civilization in general-can long survive depends upon psychology, that is to say, it depends upon what human beings desire.

The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident; but if it is the outcome of deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis.

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

Televison allows thousands of people to laugh at the same joke and still remain alone.

As soon as it is held that any belief, no matter what, is important for some other reason than that it is true, a whole host of evils is ready to spring up.

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.

The average man's opinions are much less foolish than they would be if he thought for himself.

Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the government.

Obviousness is always the enemy of correctness.

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.

Every great idea starts out as a blasphemy.

Laughter is the most inexpensive and most effective wonder drug. Laughter is a universal medicine.

All religions are both harmful and untrue.

It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results.

The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.

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.

Suppose atomic bombs had reduced the population of the world to one brother and sister; should they let the human race die out?

We are all prone to the malady of the introvert who with the manifold spectacle of the world spread out before him, turns away and gazes only upon the emptiness within.

I never held Negroes to be inherently inferior. The statement in Marriage and Morals refers to environmental conditioning. I have had it withdrawn from subsequent editions because it is clearly ambiguous.