Bertrand Russell Quotes
Collection of top 100 famous quotes about Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell Quotes & Sayings
Happy to read and share the best inspirational Bertrand Russell quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.
The dictum that human nature cannot be changed is one of those tiresome platitudes that conceal from the ignorant the depths of their own ignorance.
— Bertrand Russell
There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead.
— Bertrand Russell
The man who only loves beautiful things is dreaming, whereas the man who knows absolute beauty is wide awake.
— Bertrand Russell
Moral progress has consisted in the main of protest against cruel customs, and of attempts to enlarge human sympathy.
— 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 commonest objection to birth control is that it is against nature.
— Bertrand Russell
The sentiments of an adult are compounded of a kernal of instinct surrounded by a vast husk of education.
— Bertrand Russell
Fundamental happiness depends more than anything else upon what may be called a friendly interest in persons and things.
— Bertrand Russell
Whether science-and indeed civilization in general-can long survive depends upon psychology, that is to say, it depends upon what human beings desire.
— Bertrand Russell
Only six need be attempted.
— Bertrand Russell
One of the most powerful of all our passions is the desire to be admired and respected.
— Bertrand Russell
In our complex world, there cannot be fruitful initiative without government, but unfortunately there can be government without initiative.
— Bertrand Russell
Why repeat the old errors, if there are so many new errors to commit?
— Bertrand Russell
It was the duty of wives to submit to husbands, not of husbands to submit to wives ... men have stronger muscles than women.
— Bertrand Russell
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.
— Bertrand Russell
Fanaticism is the danger of the world, and always has been, and has done untold harm. I might almost say that I was fanatical against fanaticism.
— 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
If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation do you prefer the grain to the vote?
— Bertrand Russell
Cruelty is, in theory, a perfectly adequate ground for divorce, but it may be interpreted so as to become absurd.
— Bertrand Russell
The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.
— Bertrand Russell
None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error.
— Bertrand Russell
Life and hope for the world are to be found only in the deeds of love.
— Bertrand Russell
Physics, owing to the simplicity of its subject matter, has reached a higher state of development than any other science.
— Bertrand Russell
One of the troubles about vanity is that it grows with what it feeds on. The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about.
— Bertrand Russell
Dont let the old break you; let the love make you
— Bertrand Russell
Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know.
— 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.
— Bertrand Russell
The human heart as modern civilization has made it is more prone to hatred than to friendship. And it is prone to hatred because it is dissatisfied.
— Bertrand Russell
Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.
— Bertrand Russell
When a man tells you he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring he is an inexact man.
— Bertrand Russell
One of the main causes of trouble in the world is dogmatic and fanatical belief in some doctrine for which there is no adequate evidence
— 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.
— Bertrand Russell
Mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else.
— Bertrand Russell
All that alcohol does for them is to liberate the sense of sin, which reason suppresses in saner moments.
— Bertrand Russell
![Bertrand Russell Quotes By Bertrand Russell: [One] must look into hell before one has](https://www.wisefamousquotes.com/images/bertrand-russell-quotes-by-bertrand-russell-300398.jpg "Bertrand Russell Quotes By Bertrand Russell: [One] must look into hell before one has")
[One] must look into hell before one has any right to speak of heaven.
— Bertrand Russell
The average man's opinions are much less foolish than they would be if he thought for himself.
— Bertrand Russell
Laughter is the most inexpensive and most effective wonder drug. Laughter is a universal medicine.
— Bertrand Russell
The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.
— Bertrand Russell
Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business.
— Bertrand Russell
It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
— Bertrand Russell
Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
— Bertrand Russell
Science has made unrestricted national sovereignty incompatible with human survival. The only possibilities are now world government or death.
— Bertrand Russell
Of all the studies by which men acquire citizenship of the intellectual commonwealth, no single one is so indispensable as the study of the past.
— Bertrand Russell
Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence, no matter what orthodoxy it may be.
— Bertrand Russell
People who are vigorous and brutal often find war enjoyable.
— Bertrand Russell
In a man whose reasoning powers are good, fallacious arguments are evidence of bias.
— Bertrand Russell
All that passes for knowledge can be arranged in a hierarchy of degrees of certainty, with arithmetic and the facts of perception at the top.
— Bertrand Russell
Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the government.
— Bertrand Russell
What science cannot tell us, mankind cannot know.
— Bertrand Russell
Mysticism is, in essence, little more than a certain intensity and depth of feeling in regard to what is believed about the universe.
— 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
Choose your parents wisely.
— Bertrand Russell
You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.
— Bertrand Russell
The supreme maxim in scientific philosophising is this: wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities.
— Bertrand Russell
Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit.
— 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
That the world is in a bad shape is undeniable, but there is not the faintest reason in history to suppose that Christianity offers a way out.
— Bertrand Russell
Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.
— Bertrand Russell
Shakespeare ... If he does not give you delight, you had better ignore him [if you can].
— Bertrand Russell
Man can be scientifically manipulated.
— Bertrand Russell
Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
— Bertrand Russell
Calculating machines do sums better than even the cleverest people ... As arithmetic has grown easier, it has come to be less respected.
— Bertrand Russell
I am as drunk as a lord, but then, I am one, so what does it matter ?
— Bertrand Russell
The atomists , unlike Socrates , Plato , and Aristotle , sought to explain the world without introducing the notion of purpose or final cause.
— Bertrand Russell
Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.
— Bertrand Russell
More cranks take up unfashionable errors than unfashionable truths.
— Bertrand Russell
If the State does not acquire supremacy over [vast private] enterprises, it becomes their puppet, and they become the real State.
— Bertrand Russell
Education is not to be viewed as something like filling a vessel with water but, rather, assisting a flower to grow in its own way
— Bertrand Russell
No one ever gossips about the virtues of others
— Bertrand Russell
The whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be.
— Bertrand Russell
Human nature being what it is, people will insist upon getting some pleasure out of life.
— Bertrand Russell
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
— Bertrand Russell
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons
— Bertrand Russell
To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
— Bertrand Russell
As for earthquakes, though they were still formidable, they were so interesting that men of science could hardly regret them.
— Bertrand Russell
Unhappy business men, I am convinced, would increase their happiness more by walking six miles every day than by any conceivable change of philosophy.
— Bertrand Russell
There is no difference between someone who eats too little and sees Heaven and someone who drinks too much and sees snakes.
— Bertrand Russell
I went to Salt Lake City and the Mormons tried to convert me, but when I found they forbade tea and tobacco I thought it was no religion for me.
— Bertrand Russell
The essence of life is doing things for their own sakes.
— Bertrand Russell
Undoubtedly the desire for food has been and still is one of the main causes of political events.
— Bertrand Russell
In all the creative work that I have done, what has come first is a problem, a puzzle involving discomfort.
— Bertrand Russell
Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.
— Bertrand Russell
All forms of fear produce fatigue.
— Bertrand Russell
A million million years gives us some time to prepare for the end ... let us make the best of it.
— Bertrand Russell
All great books contain boring portions, and all great lives have contained uninteresting stretches.
— Bertrand Russell
The resistance to a new idea increases by the square of its importance.
— 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.
— Bertrand Russell
Continuity of purpose is one of the most essential ingredients of happiness in the long run, and for most men that comes chiefly through their work.
— Bertrand Russell
If everything has a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just be the world as God ...
— Bertrand Russell
It's easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.
— Bertrand Russell
Faith: a firm belief for which there is no evidence.
— Bertrand Russell
Psychology often becomes the disease of which it should be the cure.
— Bertrand Russell
One eminently orthodox Catholic divine laid it down that a confessor may fondle a nun's breasts, provided he does it without evil intent.
— Bertrand Russell
The power of thought, the vast regions it can master.
— Bertrand Russell
Beware the man of the single book
— Bertrand Russell
Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
— Bertrand Russell
