Bertrand Russell Quotes (333 Quotes)


    A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.

    We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach.


    The completely untravelled person will view all foreigners as the savage regards the members of another herd. But the man who has travelled, or who has studied international politics, will have discovered that, if he had to prosper, it must, to some

    We must care about the world of our children and grandchildren, a world we may never see.


    Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction.

    The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

    Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead

    His wit and irony - particularly when he uses them to condemn superstition - are inimitable

    How dare we speak of the laws of chance Is not chance the antithesis of all law.

    If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.

    The professional moralist in our day is a man of less than average intelligence.

    Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

    Rules of conduct, whatever they may be are not sufficient to produce good results unless the ends sought are good

    All men are scoundrels, or at any rate almost all. The men who are not must have had unusual luck, both in their birth and in their upbringing

    The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

    The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.

    Love as a relation between men and women was ruined by the desire to make sure of the legitimacy of children

    What hunger is in relation to food, zest is in relation to life

    I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.

    In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.

    To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life slowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future.

    Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.

    Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.

    In order to be happy we require all kinds of supports to our self-esteem. We are human beings, therefore human beings are the purpose of god's creation

    Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

    All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.

    This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

    If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

    A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

    Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

    The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

    Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.


    Related Authors


    John Locke - Jean-Paul Sartre - Immanuel Kant - Friedrich Nietzsche - Confucius - Zhuangzi - Thomas Carlyle - Robert M. Pirsig - Antisthenes - Amartya Sen


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