100+ Bertrand Russell Quotes | InspiringQuotes.us

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

source: - Eugénie de Guérin (1866). “Letters”, p.144

Topics: Inspirational, Motivational, Fear, Difficult Life, Knowledge And Wisdom

quote the first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of bertrand russell Quotes

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Happiness, Way In Life, Top Management

Quotation Bertrand Russell The whole problem with the world is that fools and Quotes

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.

Topics: Men, Weight Loss, Worry, Fatness, Thin Man

Quotation Bertrand Russell Men are born ignorant not stupid They are made stupid Quotes

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

Topics: Confidence, Being Yourself, Fear, Inspire Creativity, Love Yourself More

Quotation Bertrand Russell Fear is the main source of superstition and one of Quotes

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

source: - Marriage and Morals ch. 5 (1929)

Topics: Education, Truth, Religion, Philosophy Of Science, Education And Knowledge

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

source: - Bertrand Russell, Richard A. Rempel, Beryl Haslam (2000). “Uncertain Paths to Freedom: Russia and China, 1919-22”, p.356, Psychology Press

Topics: Education, Art, Philosophy, Mendacity, Intelligence And Education

You must believe that you can help bring about a better world.

Topics: Believe, World, Helping, Presidential Election

Common sense, however it tries, cannot avoid being surprised from time to time.

Topics: Common Sense, Trying, Common, Reason And Logic

Drunkeness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness.

Topics: Suicide, Suicidal, Negative

All human activity is prompted by desire.

Topics: Desire, Humans

No great achievement is possible without persistent work.

Topics: Persistence, Achievement, Persistent, Labor Day Wishes, Labour Day

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

Topics: Inspirational, Motivational, Happiness, Joy Happiness, Secret To Happiness

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

Topics: Peace, War, Fighting, Make Peace Not War, Soldiers At War

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid ... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

Topics: Courage, Men, Light, Light Of The World, Subversive

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

Topics: Death, Atheist, Intelligence, Stupidity And Intelligence, Christian Church

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

Topics: Thinking, Essentials, Certain, Doubt And Certainty

Love cannot exists as a duty; to tell a child that it ought to love its parents and its brother and sisters is utterly useless, if not worse.

Topics: Love, Brother, Children

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

Topics: Spiritual, Philosophy, Philosophical, Observing

The widespread interest in gossip is inspired, not by a love of knowledge but by malice: no one gossips about other people's secret virtues, but only about their secret vices. Accordingly most gossip is untrue, but care is taken not to verify it. Our neighbour's sins, like the consolations of religion, are so agreeable that we do not stop to scrutinise the evidence closely.

Topics: Taken, Gossip, People, Kept Secrets, Verify

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

Topics: Knowledge, Science, Imagination, Great Science

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

source: - Bertrand Russell (2013). “History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition”, p.578, Routledge

Topics: Education, Stupid, School, Not Stupid, Knowledge And Ignorance

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

Topics: Love, Happiness, Marriage, Always Happy, Inspiring Love

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

Topics: Life, Children, Men

I believe myself that romantic love is the source of the most intense delights that life has to offer. In the relation of a man and woman who love each other with passion and imagination and tenderness, there is something of inestimable value, to be ignorant of which is a great misfortune to any human being.

Topics: Life, Believe, Passion

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

Topics: Science, Errors, Hallucinations

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.

Topics: Inspirational, Happiness, Inner Peace

An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, an Agnostic may hold that the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not worth considering in practice. In that case, he is not far removed from atheism.

Topics: Christian, Atheist, Practice, Agnosticism, Improbable

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

Topics: Suicide, Drinking, Alcohol, Drunkenness

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.

Topics: Power, Men, Religion

Dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the source of opinion; it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to unbelievers; it asks of its disciples that they should inhibit natural kindliness in favor of systematic hatred.

source: - Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.403, Psychology Press

Topics: Wisdom, Intelligent, Hatred, Kindliness

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

Topics: Philosophy, Addiction, Progress, Obstinate

I had supposed until that time that it was quite common for parents to love their children, but the war persuaded me that it is a rare exception. I had supposed that most people liked money better than almost anything else, but I discovered that they liked destruction even better. I had supposed that intellectuals frequently loved truth, but I found here again that not ten per cent of them prefer truth to popularity.

Topics: Love, Children, War

We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.

Topics: Life, Spring, Creative

If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.

Topics: Magic, Would Be, Firsts, Concealing, Nobody's Perfect

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.

Topics: Love, Real, Land, Valuable Things

I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

Topics: Lying, Knowledge, Scientific Method

The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.

Topics: Believe, Law, Age, Muster, Relics

The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interest of the desire to know.

Topics: Attitude, Knowledge, Mind, Fear Of Love, Hopes And Fears

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

Topics: Philosophical, Animal, Men

I have found, for example, that if I have to write upon sum rather difficult topic, the best plan is to think about it with very great intensity-the greatest intensity of which I am capable-for a few hours or days, and at the end of that time give orders, so to speak (to my subconscious mind) that the work is to proceed underground. After some months I return consciously to the topic and find that the work has been done.

Topics: Writing, Thinking, Order, Subconscious Mind, Incubation

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

Topics: Happiness, Secret, Faces, Secret To Happiness

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.

Topics: Life, Competition, Criminals

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

Topics: Life, Money, Greed, Material Wealth, Material Things

Unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is meaningless.

Topics: Religion, Atheism, Purpose, Purpose Driven Life

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.

Topics: Happiness, Music, Happy Life, Quiet Life, True Joy

I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.

Topics: Believe, Wish, Atheism, Theism, Supposing

The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.

Topics: Love, Powerful, Men, Megalomaniacs, Narcissist

What is best in mathematics deserves not merely to be learnt as a task, but to assimilated as a part of daily thought, and brought again and again before the mind with ever-renewed encouragement.

Topics: Encouragement, Mind, Tasks

I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out.

Topics: Religious, Religion, Atheism, Anti Religious

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

Topics: Fake People, Math, Talking, Mathematical Logic, Mathematics And Science

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.

Topics: Life, Badass, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Science And Philosophy

As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.

Topics: Atheist, Men, Thinking, Agnosticism

Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that is happiness.

Topics: Thinking, Paradise, Fool

Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it.

Topics: Fear, World, Conquer

There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.

Topics: Ideas, World, Poverty

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.

Topics: Practice, Two, Facts, Moral Philosophy, Ethics And Morals

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them.

Topics: Clever, Stupid, Men, Stupid Men, Clever Man

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.

Topics: Summer, Moving, Men, Summer Days

Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.

Topics: Life, Happiness, Decision, Stop Procrastination

We know too much and feel too little.

Topics: Too Much, Littles, Feels

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.

Topics: Clever, Stupid, Men

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.

Topics: Civilization, People, Relaxation

Very many people spend money in ways quite different from those that their natural tastes would enjoin, merely because the respect of their neighbors depends upon their possession of a good car and their ability to give good dinners. As a matter of fact, any man who can obviously afford a car but genuinely prefers travels or a good library will in the end be much more respected than if he behaved exactly like everyone else.

Topics: Men, Giving, Car

Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for the others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.

Topics: Struggle, Quality, Needs, Overwork

I say people who feel they must have a faith or religion in order to face life are showing a kind of cowardice, which in any other sphere would be considered contemptible. But when it is in the religious sphere it is thought admirable, and I cannot admire cowardice whatever sphere it is in.

Topics: Religious, Order, People

The happy life is to an extraordinary extent the same as the good life.

Topics: Good Life, Happy Life, Life Is

The satisfaction to be derived from success in a great constructive enterprise is one of the most massive that life has to offer.

Topics: Happiness, Satisfaction, Enterprise

How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?

Topics: World, Cruelty, Endure, Wanton

The essence of the liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held; instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.

Topics: Lying, Essence, May

Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.

Topics: Thinking, Religion, Atheism

Change is scientific; progress is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.

Topics: Change, Science, Progress, Scientific Progress

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.

Topics: Believe, Men, Comforting

The whole conception of a God is a conception derived from the ancient oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages.

Topics: Men, Wish, Age, Conception

Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?

Topics: Men, Doubt, World, Reasonable Man

Every great idea starts out as a blasphemy.

Topics: Ideas, Blasphemy, Great Idea

In the visible world, the Milky Way is a tiny fragment; within this fragment, the solar system is an infinitesimal speck, and of this speck our planet is a microscopic dot. On this dot, tiny lumps of impure carbon and water, of complicated structure, with somewhat unusual physical and chemical properties, crawl about for a few years, until they are dissolved again into the elements of which they are compounded.

Topics: Years, Water, Elements, Milky Way, Specks

No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.

Topics: Believe, Humility, Wicked

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

Topics: Challenges, Way, Problem, Problems And Challenges

I do not believe that I am now dreaming, but I cannot prove that I am not.

Topics: Dream, Believe, Prove, Waking Life

Belief systems provide a programme which relieves the necessity of thought.

Topics: Belief, Belief Systems

Envy was one of the most potent causes of unhappiness.

Topics: Envy, Causes, Unhappiness

The teacher, like the artist and the philosopher, can perform his work adequately only if he feels himself to be an individual directed by an inner creative impulse, not dominated and fettered by an outside authority.

Topics: Teacher, Artist, Creative

Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.

Topics: Truth, Trying, Truthful, Inconvenient

Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.

Topics: Math, Mathematics, Math And Music, Math Education, Mathematical Beauty

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

Topics: Stupid, Ignorance, Imagination, Painful Things

a generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow process of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers as though they were cut flowers in a vase.

Topics: Flower, Cutting, Men

We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think in fact they do so.

Topics: Thinking, Views, Opposites

All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.

Topics: Science, Ideas, Approximation

Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.

Topics: Humility, Men, People

The discipline in your life should be one determined by your own desires and your own needs, not put upon you by society or authority.

source: - Bertrand Russell (1987). “Bertrand Russell on ethics, sex, and marriage”

Topics: Discipline, Desire, Needs

Some care is needed in using Descartes' argument. "I think, therefore I am" says rather more than is strictly certain. It might seem as though we are quite sure of being the same person to-day as we were yesterday, and this is no doubt true in some sense. But the real Self is as hard to arrive at as the real table, and does not seem to have that absolute, convincing certainty that belongs to particular experiences.

Topics: Real, Thinking, Self, Real Self

Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.

Topics: Government, Law

No man can be a good teacher unless he has feelings of warm affection toward his pupils and a genuine desire to impart to them what he believes to be of value.

Topics: Teacher, Believe, Men, Good Teaching, Teaching English

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.

Topics: Thinking, Atheism

More important than the curriculum is the question of the methods of teaching and the spirit in which the teaching is given

Topics: Teacher, Teaching, Important, Methods Of Teaching, Teachers From Kids

The painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the color which common sense says they 'really' have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear.

Topics: Thinking, Color, Common Sense

All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can only be refuted by science: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.

Topics: People, Enemy, Suffering

[Man] ... 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 an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labour 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...

Topics: Inspiration, Men, Fire, Debris, Unyielding

I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.

Topics: Religion, Harm, True Religion, Atheistic

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.

Topics: Humility, World, Littles, Numbers And Math

Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance.

Topics: Science, Giving, Development, Organic Life, Evolution Of Life

When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since there is no criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but mutual hatred and an open or covert appeal to force.

Topics: Men, Issues, Two, Covert, Two Religions

It is likely that America will be more important during the next century or two, but after that it may well be the turn of China.

Topics: Two, America, Important

It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.

Topics: Believe, Men, Intuition

It is for this reason that rationality is of supreme importance to the well-being of the human species...even more, in those less fortunate times in which it is despised and rejected as the vain dream of men who lack the virility to kill where they cannot agree.

Topics: Dream, Men, Reason, Less Fortunate, Despised

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

Topics: Learning, Knowledge, Parenting

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.

Topics: Clever, Smart, Stupid, Stupid Men, Stupidity And Intelligence

One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.

Topics: Men, Religion, Virtuous, Wrong Things

If we spent half an hour every day in silent immobility, I am convinced that we should conduct all our affairs, personal, national, and international, far more sanely than we do at present.

Topics: Meditation, Half, Affair

The immense majority of intellectually eminent men disbelieve in the Christian religion, but they conceal the fact in public, because they are afraid of losing their incomes.

Topics: Christian, Men, Religion

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

Topics: Holiday, Men, Important

But if thought is to become the possession of many, not the privilege of the few, we must have done with fear. It is fear that holds men back - fear lest their cherished beliefs should prove delusions, fear lest the institutions by which they live should prove harmful, fear lest they themselves should prove less worthy of respect than they have supposed themselves to be.

Topics: Men, Thinking, Done

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

Topics: Philosophy, Stupid, Thinking

The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth.

Topics: Men, Facts, Favors, Good Moral, Contending

Scientific societies are as yet in their infancy. It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished.

Topics: Country, School, Thinking, Science And Society

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

Topics: Inspirational, Children, Pain, Oppressors

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

Topics: Truth, Believe, Men, Scrutinize

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.

Topics: Suffering, Wicked, Injustice

Science does not aim at establishing immutable truths and eternal dogmas; its aim is to approach the truth by successive approximations, without claiming that at any stage final and complete accuracy has been achieved.

Topics: Doe, Finals, Dogma, Approximation

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.

Topics: Envy, Desire, May

William James used to preach the "will-to-believe." For my part, I should wish to preach the "will-to-doubt." None of our beliefs are quite true; all at least have a penumbra of vagueness and error. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

Topics: Believe, Opposites, Errors, Vagueness, Discovering The Truth

The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.

source: - Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Peter Köllner (1996). “A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42”, p.441, Psychology Press

Topics: Men, Emotional, Intelligent, Muzzle

Life is just one cup of coffee after another, and don't look for anything else.

Topics: Coffee, Looks, Cups

A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing anxiety.

Topics: Worry, Anxiety, Matter

Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.

Topics: Spiritual, War, Evil, Evils Of War

All definite knowledge - so I should contend - belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack by both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy.

Topics: Philosophy, Knowledge, Men

People will tell us that without the consolations of religion they would be intolerably unhappy. So far as this is true, it is a coward's argument. Nobody but a coward would consciously choose to live in a fool's paradise. When a man suspects his wife of infidelity, he is not thought the better of for shutting his eyes to the evidence. And I cannot see why ignoring evidence should be contemptible in one case and admirable in the other.

Topics: Eye, Men, People

But as the work proceeded I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was not more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.

Topics: Fall, Elephants, Years, Great Math

Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos.

Topics: Liberty, Littles, Too Much, Stagnation

Mysticism is, in essence, little more than a certain intensity and depth of feeling in regard to what is believed about the universe.

Topics: Essence, Feelings, Depth

The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.

Topics: Men, Views, Lasts, Uniformity

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.

Topics: Men, Littles, Faces

Without civic morality communities perish; without personal morality their survival has no value.

Topics: Community, Survival, Morality, Moral Ethics, Civics

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

Topics: Believe, Science, Opposites

Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.

Topics: Happiness, Happy, Spring, Looking For Happiness, He Makes Me Happy

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

Topics: Inspirational, Success, Educational, Being Stupid, Stupid Life

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

Topics: Hope, Misery, Born

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.

Topics: Believe, Love Life, Ego

No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.

Topics: Respect, People, Gossip

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.

Topics: Fear, Men, Thinking, Herd Mentality

If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

Topics: Change, Happiness, Success, Looking For Happiness, Difficult Circumstances

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

Topics: Freedom, Thinking, Government

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

Topics: Power, Hatred, Idealism, Idealism And Realism

To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.

Topics: Democracy, Citizens, Importance, Immunity

Some people would rather die than think.

Topics: Education, Thinking, People

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

Topics: Death, Christian, Atheist, Christian Theology, Religious Dogma

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

Topics: Science, Doubt, Atheism

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

Topics: Change, Happiness, Happy, Secret To Happiness, Looking For Happiness

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Topics: Fear, Believe, Animal, Credulity, Believing In Something

All movements go too far.

Topics: Change, Movement, Belief

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

Topics: Freedom, Fear, Desire

Historically, it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if He did we do not know anything about Him.

Topics: Religion, Atheism, Christ

And all this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country`s pride.

Topics: Country, War, Stupid, Rebuff, Luxurious

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.

Topics: Exercise, Liberty, Sacred, American Capitalism, Unfortunate Circumstances

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

Topics: Love, Life, Wedding, Lonely Man, I Am Lonely

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Topics: Knowledge, Useless, Pleasure, Knowledge And Learning, Knowledge Gained

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.

Topics: Life, Strong, Fear, Pity Love, Search For Knowledge

Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.

Topics: Freedom, Humorous, Men, Blame Me

For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favorable and unfavorable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern; all alike, I should say, result from paucity of experience.

Topics: Ancient, Modern, Feminine, Generalization, Masculine And Feminine

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

Topics: Inspirational, Funny, Patience, Inspirational Science, Mysterious Universe

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

Topics: Funny, Fear, Philosophy

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.

Topics: Respect, Humor, Public Opinion

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

Topics: Atheist, People, Criticism, Change Is Good

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Topics: Inspirational, Success, Wisdom

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

Topics: Change, Teamwork, Collaboration, Win Win, Social Change

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.

Topics: Leadership, Gratitude, Appreciation, Taken For Granted, Question Mark

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

Topics: Hate, Successful, Hatred

Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.

Topics: Marriage, Sex, Feminist

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

Topics: Happiness, Race, People

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

source: - Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.70, Routledge

Topics: Fear, Tolerance, Religion, Ferocity, Tolerance And Respect

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

Topics: Science, Power, Energy, Social Science

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

Topics: Happiness, Happy, Mind

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

Topics: Love, Inspirational, Life, Fear Of Love, Intense Love

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

Topics: Food, Zest, Hunger, Zest For Life

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.

Topics: Time, Truth, Thinking, Devouring

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

Topics: Past, Degrees, Clarity, Vague

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.

Topics: Philosophy, Animal, Men, Theoretical, Civilised

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.

Topics: Philosophy, Believe, Simple

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

Topics: Inspirational, Funny, Reading, Reading Habits

When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.

Topics: Men, Emotional, Favour

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.

Topics: Math, Men, Wife, Verify, Examining

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.

Topics: Inspirational, Philosophy, Believe

The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more amazing becomes what human beings have achieved.

Topics: Achievement, Faces, Realizing

Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.

source: - Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.2, Psychology Press

Topics: Intelligence, Experts, May

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.

Topics: Giving, Definitions, Might, Illuminating

With the introduction of agriculture mankind entered upon a long period of meanness, misery, and madness, from which they are only now being freed by the beneficent operation of the machine.

Topics: Agriculture, Long, Machines, Farming And Farmers, Farms

When you are studying any matter or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: what are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted by what you wish to believe, but look only and surely at what are the facts.

source: - BBC interview on "Face to Face", 1959.

Topics: Philosophy, Believe, Wish

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

Topics: Political, Acquisition, Politics

When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

Topics: Wisdom, Children, Husband

We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.

Topics: Philosophical, Science, Engineering, Little Knowledge

Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.

Topics: Math, Science, Air, Best Science, Scientific Truth

Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people's.

Topics: Happiness, People, Indifferent, Science And Society

When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man.

Topics: Truth, Men, Safe

Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.

Topics: Creativity, Ideas, Creative

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.

Topics: Birthday, Philosophy, Educational, Western Philosophy, Absolute Certainty

Love is wise â€“ Hatred is foolish.

Topics: Wise, Love Is, Hatred

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.

Topics: Science, Men, Progress, Amoeba

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

Topics: Order, Unity, Invention, Catalogues, Human Inventions

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

Topics: Elderly, Umpires, Ignorant, Magistrates

Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love.

Topics: Sex, People, Instinct

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