Men: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Z
Women: A B C D E G H J K L M N O P R S T V Z
Home: Bertrand Russell Quotes

Bertrand Russell Quotes

Philosopher
Born On
1872-05-18
Died On
1970-02-02
Birth Place
Trellech, Monmouthshire, UK
Death Place
Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales, UK
Birth Sign
taurus
Father
Viscount
Mother
Viscountess Amberley
Spouse
Alys Pearsall Smith, Dora Winifred Black, Edith Finch, Patricia Helen Spence
Nationality
British
Education
Trinity College, Cambridge (1890–1895)
Actors, Scientists, Philosophers, Mathematicians, Film & Theater Personalities, Intellectuals & Academics

A logician par excellence, Bertrand Russell was also known for his impeccable sense of humor and witty retorts. Apparently once he made a claim that if 1+1 =1 is true, then it is possible to prove anything true. Someone decided to put Russell to test and asked the man to prove that he was the Pope. Russell mulled over the question for a while and then answered, "I am one.  The Pope is one.  Therefore, the Pope and I are one."

The logician was also one of the masterminds behind analytic philosophy and a champion of the anti-war movement. After the infamous ‘World War II’, a Cold War ensued between the Eastern and Western Bloc. Bertrand was invited to deliver a lecture on politics in England during this conflict-stricken period. Since he was a leftist, the members of the Conservative club did not take a liking to the speaker. Enraged by his views, the ladies started assaulting Russell with whatever they could lay their hands on. The guard on duty was faced with a predicament, since the assaulters were women, he could not be rude to them but he also had to save Bernard. This guard tried his best to pacify the women and felt maybe they would mellow down if he told them about how influential Russell was. He first said "But he is a great mathematician!" but the mob ignored him. Later, the guard tried a different tactic and this time he shouted "But he is a great philosopher!" However, there was no effect on the ladies as they continued to ignore his pleas. Finally the guard uttered, "But his brother is an earl!" Fortunately, this time the guard got the attention of the ladies and Bernard was finally rescued.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.

Belief Work
Bertrand Russell

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

Right Wars
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.

People World
Bertrand Russell

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

Mathematics
Bertrand Russell

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

Doubts Troubles World
Bertrand Russell

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Time
Bertrand Russell

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

Education
Bertrand Russell

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

Life Love Fear
Bertrand Russell

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Good Life Love Knowledge
Bertrand Russell

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

Philosophy Science
Bertrand Russell

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

Inspiration World
Bertrand Russell

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

Funny
Bertrand Russell

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Pleasure Knowledge
Bertrand Russell

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.

Things
Bertrand Russell

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

Mankind
Bertrand Russell

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

Things Happiness
Bertrand Russell

The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.

Sureness
Bertrand Russell

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

Love Happiness
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.

Life Love Knowledge
Bertrand Russell

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

Life Nothing
Bertrand Russell

Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.

Life Love
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.

Mathematics
Bertrand Russell

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

Love Power Impracticality Life
Bertrand Russell

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

Feelings
Bertrand Russell

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

Wisdom Fear
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.

Poetry Excellence Mathematics
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.

Life Adventure
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.

People World Happiness
Bertrand Russell

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

Hope
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

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.

Love Women Being Alone
Bertrand Russell

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

People Democracy
Bertrand Russell

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Wisdom Fear
Bertrand Russell

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

Country Wars
Bertrand Russell

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

World Happiness
Bertrand Russell

Sin is geographical.

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.

Things Happiness
Bertrand Russell

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Patriotism
Bertrand Russell

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

People
Bertrand Russell

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

Opinion
Bertrand Russell

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

Change Happiness Hope
Bertrand Russell

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

Bertrand Russell

The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.

Facts Knowledge
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.

Nature Time Happiness
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.

Love Universe Mathematics
Bertrand Russell

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.

Greatness Life Happiness Excitement
Bertrand Russell

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

Nothing Purpose Universe
Bertrand Russell

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

Fear Urge
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.

Good Wickedness World
Bertrand Russell

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

Art Moral Values
Bertrand Russell

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

Opinion Freedom Government
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.

Science Intelligence
Bertrand Russell

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

Good
Bertrand Russell

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

Good Happiness
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.

America Time Equality
Bertrand Russell

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

Good Conscience Unkindness
Bertrand Russell

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

Life Support
Bertrand Russell

Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.

Right Discipline Mind
Bertrand Russell

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.

People
Bertrand Russell

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.

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.

Respect Value
Bertrand Russell

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.

Farming Psychosis
Bertrand Russell

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.

Respect
Bertrand Russell

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

People Criticism
Bertrand Russell

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

Opinion Fear
Bertrand Russell

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.

Capitalism Principles Liberty
Bertrand Russell

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

Praise Intelligence
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.

Greatness Fear Nation
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.

Greatness History
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.

Good People Time Food
Bertrand Russell

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

Knowledge
Bertrand Russell

The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.

Family Fathers Golf
Bertrand Russell

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

Bertrand Russell

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

Education Freedom Intelligence
Bertrand Russell

All movements go too far.

Bertrand Russell

The pleasure of work is open to anyone who can develop some specialised skill, provided that he can get satisfaction from the exercise of his skill without demanding universal applause.

Fulfillment Work
Bertrand Russell

None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.

Fear
Bertrand Russell

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

Freedom
Bertrand Russell

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

Society
Bertrand Russell

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

Order Unity
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?

Singing
Bertrand Russell

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

People Happiness
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

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.

Bertrand Russell

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

Time Wisdom Feelings
Bertrand Russell

A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.

People Duty Work Wish
Bertrand Russell

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

People
Bertrand Russell

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

Democracy
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.

Age Philosophy
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.

People Earth Work
Bertrand Russell

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

Power Science Energy
Bertrand Russell

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

Love
Bertrand Russell

Liberty is the right to do what I like; license, the right to do what you like.

Right Liberty
Bertrand Russell

No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.

People
Bertrand Russell

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

Sleep
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.

Love
Bertrand Russell

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

Bertrand Russell

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

Life
Bertrand Russell

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.

Progress World
Bertrand Russell

Related Authors

C. S. Lewis
Francis Bacon
Alan Watts
Thomas Hobbes
John Stuart Mill
Sir Thomas Browne
Sean Connery
Sacha Baron Cohen
Henry Cavill