Bertrand Russell Quotes
The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.
This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible and is something which no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate.
Our individual life is brief, and perhaps the whole life of mankind will be brief if measured in astronomical scale
There is as much difference between a collection of mentally free citizens and a community molded by modern methods of propaganda as there is between a heap of raw materials and a battleship.
Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, the chief glory of man.
Those who in principle oppose birth control are either incapable of arithmetic or else in favour of war, pestilence and famine as permanent features of human life.
My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.
Cynicism such as one finds very frequently among the most highly educated young men and women of the West, results from the combination of comfort and powerlessness.
Beggars do not envy millionaires, though of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful.
The Axiom of Choice is necessary to select a set from an infinite number of socks, but not an infinite number of shoes.
I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy.
The qualities most needed are charity and tolerance, not some form of fanatical faith such as is offered to us by the various rampant isms
Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.
When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us.
All the important human advances that we know of since historical times began have been due to individuals of whom the majority faced virulent public opposition.
Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions; do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.
Moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modern world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda.
To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.
Fundamental happiness depends more than anything else upon what may be called a friendly interest in persons and things.
Intelligence, it might be said, has caused our troubles; but it is not unintelligence that will cure them. Only more and wiser intelligence can make a happier world
As soon as it is held that any belief, no matter what, is important for some other reason than that it is true, a whole host of evils is ready to spring up.
To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind are prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is a paradox; as is a paradox why the number 1 is not prime if it has no other divisors besides himself.
The mind is a strange machine which can combine the materials offered to it in the most astonishing ways.
That Plato's Republic should have been admired, on its political side, by decent people, is perhaps the most astonishing example of literary snobbery in all history.
There seems scarcely any limit to what could be done in the way of producing a good world, if only men would use science wisely.
It will be found, as men grow more tolerant in their instincts, that many uniformities now insisted upon are useless and even harmful.
To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.
It is not my prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.
Love as a relation between men and women was ruined by the desire to make sure of the legitimacy of children.
The man who pursues happiness wisely will aim at the possession of a number of subsidiary interests in addition to those central ones upon which his life is built.
No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor, but honest.
...impregnation will be regarded in an entirely different manner, more in the light of a surgical operation, so that it will be thought not ladylike to have it performed in the natural manner.
A marriage is likely to be called happy if neither party ever expected to get much happiness out of it.
Public opinion is always more tyrannical towards those who obviously fear it than towards those who feel indifferent to it.
As for earthquakes, though they were still formidable, they were so interesting that men of science could hardly regret them.
Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely.
One of the chief triumphs of modern mathematics consists in having discovered what mathematics really is.