Bertrand Russell Quotes on Wisdom & Knowledge (18 Quotes)

A proverb is one man's wit and all men's wisdom.

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

Some kind of philosophy is a necessity to all but the most thoughtless, and in the absence of knowledge it is almost sure to be a silly philosophy.

It is not by prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws

Three passions have governed my life The longings for love, the search for knowledge, And unbearable pity for the suffering of humankind. Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness. In the union of love I have seen In a mystic miniature the prefiguring v

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.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway about the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

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.

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

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.

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

The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power

I do not think any reasonable person can doubt that in India, China and Japan, if the knowledge of birth control existed, the birthrate would fall very rapidly

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

On the one hand, philosophy is to keep us thinking about things that we may come to know, and on the other hand to keep us modestly aware of how much that seems like knowledge isn't knowledge

What men want is not knowledge, but certainty.

Francis Bacon, a man who rose to eminence by betraying his friends, asserted, no doubt as one of the ripe lessons of experience, that knowledge is power