Bertrand Russell Quotes (333 Quotes)

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.

You may, if you are an old-fashioned schoolmaster, wish to consider yourself full of universal benevolence and at the same time derive great pleasure from caning boys. In order to reconcile these two desires you have to persuade yourself that caning

When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.

He can have few rivals in the courage and integrity and complete self-abnegation with which he has given up his own career (in which, however, he still remains eminent) to devote himself to combating the nuclear peril as well as other, allied evils.

And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.

The atomic bomb embodies the results of a combination genius and patience as remarkable as any in the history of mankind.

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.

5. a priori Logical propositions are such as can be known a priori without study of the actual world.

The fundamental defect of Christian ethics consists in the fact that it labels certain classes of acts 'sins' and others 'virtue' on grounds that have nothing to do with their social consequences

Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

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

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

To a modern mind, it is difficult to feel enthusiastic about a virtuous life if nothing is going to be achieved by it.

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

Our mental make-up is suited to a life of very severe physical labor

The most valuable things in life are not measured in monetary terms. The really important things are not houses and lands, stocks and bonds, automobiles and real state, but friendships, trust, confidence, empathy, mercy, love and faith.

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others

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

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

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.

Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.

To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century.

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

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

'But,' you might say, 'none of this shakes my belief that 2 and 2 are 4.' You are quite right, except in marginal cases and it is only in marginal cases that you are doubtful whether a certain animal is a dog or a certain length is less than a meter. Tw.

At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love. I had not imagined there was anything so delicious in the world. From that moment until I was thirty-eight, mathematics was my chief interest and my chief source of happiness.

Never let yourself be diverted either by what you would wish to believe or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. Look only at ... the facts.

Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young the other tenth is physiological, and will occur in one way or another whatever the state of the law may be.

Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.

An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection and this generalization would be just as well founded as the generalization which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet.

Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.

Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

Most political leaders acquire their position by causing large numbers of people to believe that these leaders are actuated by altruistic desires

As men begin to grow civilized, they cease to be satisfied with mere tabus, and substitute divine commands and prohibitions.

To save the world requires faith and courage faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true

Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.

Life is a brief, small, and transitory phenomenon in an obscure corner, not at all the sort of thing that one would make a fuss about if one were not personally concerned

Furious at his own misery, he sought the cause in the misdeeds of other men, and turned upon them in savage battle, thus magnifying a thousand times the ills that Nature has provide

Morally, a philosopher who uses his professional competence for anything except a disinterested search for truth is guilty of a kind of treachery

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

Bad philosophers may have a certain influence good philosophers, never.

There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literature or great philosophy they will not be able to discover the secret springs of happiness in the human heart they will know nothing of love and friendship.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.