Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.
-- Bertrand Russell
Too little liberty brings stagnation and too much brings chaos.
-- Bertrand Russell
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
-- Bertrand Russell
Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
-- Bertrand Russell
Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
-- Bertrand Russell
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
-- Bertrand Russell
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture.
-- Bertrand Russell
War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.
-- Bertrand Russell
A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
-- 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
One should respect public opinion insofar as it is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
-- Bertrand Russell
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
-- Bertrand Russell
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
-- Bertrand Russell
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. For the rest our knowledge is negative.
-- 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 true function of logic,... as applied to matters of experience,... is analytic rather than constructive; taken a priori, it shows the possibility of hitherto unsuspected alternatives more often than the impossibility of alternatives which seemed prima facie possible. Thus, while it liberates imagination as to what the world may be, it refuses to legislate as to what the world is.
-- Bertrand Russell
The conception of the necessary unit of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of the imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the straitwaistcoated benevolent institution, which idealism palms off as the totality of being.
-- Bertrand Russell
There is a further advantage [to hydrogen bombs]: the supply of uranium in the planet is very limited, and it might be feared that it would be used up before the human race was exterminated, but now that the practically unlimited supply of hydrogen can be utilized, there is considerable reason to hope that homo sapiens may put an end to himself, to the great advantage of such less ferocious animals as may survive. But it is time to return to less cheerful topics.
-- Bertrand Russell
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
-- Bertrand Russell
In fact the opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.
-- Bertrand Russell
First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first one is hard and meagerly paid; the second is easy and well-paid.
-- 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
No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.
-- Bertrand Russell
So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it.
-- Bertrand Russell
To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.
-- Bertrand Russell
There is a story of a man who got the experience from laughing gas; whenever he was under its influence, he knew the secret of the universe, but when he came to, he had forgotten it. At last, with immense effort, he wrote down the secret before the vision had faded. When completely recovered, he rushed to see what he had written. It was "A smell of petroleum prevails throughout."
-- Bertrand Russell
As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles.
-- Bertrand Russell
I have been accused of a habit of changing my opinions
-- Bertrand Russell
That Man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.
-- 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
Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
-- 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
When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless.
-- Bertrand Russell
I do not believe that I am now dreaming, but I cannot prove that I am not.
-- Bertrand Russell
If a religion is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Bertrand_Russell
If,_as_we_are_told,_[w:Lee_Harvey_Oswald" title="reference on Oswald" target="_blank">Oswald was the lone assassin, where is the issue of national security?
-- Bertrand Russell
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
-- Bertrand Russell
Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so.
-- Bertrand Russell
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
-- Bertrand Russell
Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoan to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoan, who gives us this assurance.
-- Bertrand Russell
Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.
-- Bertrand Russell
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
-- Bertrand Russell
Just because an idea is held by the masses does not make it true. Indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, an idea that is widely held is more likely to be false than true.
-- Bertrand Russell
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing.
-- Bertrand Russell
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
-- Bertrand Russell
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
-- Bertrand Russell
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
-- Bertrand Russell
War does not determine who is right
-- Bertrand Russell
What science cannot tell us, mankind cannot know.
-- Bertrand Russell
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
-- 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 movement of human society, viewed throughout the period known to history, is partly cyclic, partly progressive; iit resembles a tune played over and over again, but each time louder and with a fuller orchestration than before. In this tune there are quiet passages and passionate passages; there is a terrific climax, and then a time of silence until the tune begins again. Such a climax is exemplified by the period through which we are now passing or about to pass. If we think only of the one tune, it seems to end in nothingness; if we think only of one cycle, it seems that the whole process is futile. It is only by fixing our attention upon what is progressive, upon what distinguishes one cycle from the next, that we become aware of the advance made from age to age, and of the steady movement underlying the back-and-forth eddies of the surface.
-- Bertrand Russell
Mathematics, rightly viewed, posseses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture.
-- Bertrand Russell
The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
-- Bertrand Russell
It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather that the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.
-- Bertrand Russell
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
-- Bertrand Russell
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
-- Bertrand Russell
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