Bertrand Russell Quotes (333 Quotes)

The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts.

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.

The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.

I am delighted to know that Principia Mathematica can now be done by machinery... I am quite willing to believe that anything in deductive logic can be done by machinery.

Measures of sterilization should, in my opinion, be very definitely confined to persons who are mentally defective

Male superiority in former days was easily demonstrated, because if a woman questioned her husband's he could beat her. From superiority in this respect others were thought to follow. Men were more reasonable than women, more inventive, less swayed b

The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so at other times he thinks about other things

The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.

Through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.

Change is one thing, progress is another. 'Change' is scientific, 'progress' is ethical change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

The qualities most needed are charity and tolerance, not some form of fanatical faith such as is offered to us by the various rampant isms

Mathematics possesses not only truth, but also supreme beauty.

Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a long period, as, for example, ancient Egypt persisted, or does it necessarily contain within itself forces which must bring either decay or explosion

The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists in the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself.

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

Thinking you know when in fact you don't is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone

I have sought love because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven the saints and poets have imagined

In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.

The need for prostitution arises from the fact that many men are either unmarried or away from their wives on journeys, that such men are not content to remain continent, and that in a conventionally virtuous community they do not find respectable women.

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

1. Generality Certain characteristics of the subject are clear. To begin with, we do not in this subject deal with particular things or particular properties we deal formally with what can be said about any thing or any property. We are prepared to say that one and one are two, but not that Socrates and Plato are two....

All human activity is prompted by desire.

Vanity is a motive of immense potency.

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.

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

I found, one day in school, a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied 'The bigs hit me, so I hit the babiesthat's fair.' In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

The idea that men are God's children is one which cannot be conveyed to the Trobriand Islanders, since they do not think that anybody is the child of any male

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

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

Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.

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.

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.

You must not kill your neighbor, whom perhaps you genuinely hate, but by a little propaganda this hate can be transferred to some foreign nation, against whom all your murderous impulses become patriotic heroism

It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go.

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

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.

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.

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.

Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

Man, condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness

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

Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth.

If I had the power to organize higher education as I should wish it to be, I should seek to substitute for the old orthodox religions which appeal to few among the young, and those as a rule the least intelligent and the most obscurantist something wh.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.

What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.

It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals.