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Quotes by Bertrand Russell


The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
– Bertrand Russell

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.
– Bertrand Russell
Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.
– Bertrand Russell
Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
– Bertrand Russell
Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.
– Bertrand Russell
Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.
– Bertrand Russell
Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.
– Bertrand Russell
Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
– Bertrand Russell
God is a reality of spirit... He cannot... be conceived as an object, not even as the very highest object. God is not to be found in the world of objects.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
I did not know I loved you until I heard myself telling so, for one instance I thought, Good God, what have I said? and then I knew it was true.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.
– Bertrand Russell
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.
– Bertrand Russell
In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.
– Bertrand Russell
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
– Bertrand Russell
It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals.
– Bertrand Russell
Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.
– Bertrand Russell
Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.
– Bertrand Russell
No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?
– Bertrand Russell
None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.
– Bertrand Russell
Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.
– Bertrand Russell
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.
– Bertrand Russell
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.
– Bertrand Russell
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
– Bertrand Russell
Sin is geographical.
– Bertrand Russell
That which exists through itself is called The Eternal. The Eternal has neither name nor shape. It is the one essence, the one primal spirit. Essence and life cannot be seen. They are contained in the light of heaven. The light of heaven cannot be seen. It is contained in the two eyes.
– Bertrand Russell
The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and start From the slightest pain or equal foe.
– Bertrand Russell
The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.
– Bertrand Russell
The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
– Bertrand Russell
The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.
– Bertrand Russell
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
– Bertrand Russell
The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
– Bertrand Russell
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
– Bertrand Russell
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.
– Bertrand Russell
A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
– Bertrand Russell
Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
– Bertrand Russell
Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
– Bertrand Russell
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 habit. 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.
– Bertrand Russell
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.
– Bertrand Russell
Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position.
– Bertrand Russell
Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
– Bertrand Russell
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
– Bertrand Russell
The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
– Bertrand Russell
The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
– Bertrand Russell
There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
– Bertrand Russell
This is one of those views which are so absolutely absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them.
– Bertrand Russell
This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.
– Bertrand Russell
Too little liberty brings stagnation and too much brings chaos.
– Bertrand Russell
What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.
– Bertrand Russell
Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
– Bertrand Russell
When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others.
– Bertrand Russell
Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.
– Bertrand Russell
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
– Bertrand Russell
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
– Bertrand Russell
One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.
– Bertrand Russell
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 widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.
– Bertrand Russell
It is obvious that 'obscenity' is not a term capable of exact legal definition; in the practice of the Courts, it means 'anything that shocks the magistrate.'
– Bertrand Russell
War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
– Bertrand Russell
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
– Bertrand Russell
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
– Bertrand Russell
Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
– Bertrand Russell
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
– Bertrand Russell
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.
– Bertrand Russell
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
– Bertrand Russell
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
– Bertrand Russell
The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.
– Bertrand Russell
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
– Bertrand Russell