Bertrand Russell Quotes

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.

All forms of fear produce fatigue.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

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.

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

Human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those who seem least to demand it.

I dislike Communism because it is undemocratic, and capitalism because it favors exploitation.

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

Official morality has always been oppressive and negative: it has said "thou shalt not," and has not troubled to investigate the effect of activities not forbidden by the code.

Beware the man of the single book

Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves.

Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.

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

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.

Faith: a firm belief for which there is no evidence.

Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.

If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full.

To fear love is to fear life.

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

It's easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.

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

The key to happiness is accepting one unpleasant reality every day.

The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we live.

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

The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.

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

The experience of overcoming fear is extraordinarily delightful.

It seems to me a fundamental dishonesty, and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it's useful and not because you think it's true.

From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization of Islam flourished. What was lost to christendom at this time was not lost to civilization, but quite the contrary.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

God and Satan alike are essentially human figures, the one a projection of ourselves, the other of our enemies.

What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy.

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.

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

Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion go hand in hand.

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.

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

Your writing is never as good as you hoped; but never as bad as you feared.

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

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

Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety.

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.

A smile happens in a flash, but its memory can last a lifetime.

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