Quotes by Bertrand Russell (Page 4 of 4)

We are all prone to the malady of the introvert who with the manifold spectacle of the world spread out before him, turns away and gazes only upon the emptiness within.

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.

Worry is a form of fear, and all forms of fear produce fatigue. A man who has learned not to feel fear will find the fatigue of daily life enormously diminished.

No great achievement is possible without persistent work.

The man who is unhappy will, as a rule, adopt an unhappy creed, while the man who is happy will adopt a happy creed; each may attribute his happiness or unhappiness to his beliefs, while the real causation is the other way round.

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.

To realize the unimportance of time is the gate to wisdom.

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.

The importance of time is rather practical than theoretical, rather in relation to our desires than in relation to truth.

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt.

Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.

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

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.

If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.

Sin is geographical.

Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

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.

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.

Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.

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.

To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.

In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

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

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

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

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

No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.

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

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

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.

All movements go too far.

It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

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

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

Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.

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.

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

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

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.

The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life, which is impossible to the pure egoist.

Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable, and praised when they are not praiseworthy.

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?

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.

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

Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.

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.

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

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.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

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

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.

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

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

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

Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.

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

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

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

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.

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.

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

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

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.

The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

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

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.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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