Quotes by Bertrand Russell
(Page 5 of 6)

Civilized life has altogether grown too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide a harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting.

First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.

A man is not allowed to practise medicine unless he knows something of the human body, but a financier is allowed to operate freely without any knowledge at all of the multifarious effects of his activities, with the sole exception of the effect upon his bank account.

Plato possessed the art to dress up illiberal suggestions in such a way that they deceived future ages, which admired the Republic without ever becoming aware of what was involved in its proposals.

I wish to understand Plato, but to treat him with as little reverence as if he were a contemporary English or American advocate of totalitarianism.

Laughter is the most inexpensive and most effective wonder drug. Laughter is a universal medicine.

Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.

One's work is never so bad as it appears on bad days, nor so good as it appears on good days.

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.

Patience and boredom are closely related. Boredom, a certain kind of boredom, is really impatience. You don't like the way things are, they aren't interesting enough for you, so you deccide- and boredom is a decision-that you are bored.

All's well that ends well; which is the epitaph I should put on my tombstone if I were the last man left alive.

Televison allows thousands of people to laugh at the same joke and still remain alone.

Boys and young men acquire readily the moral sentiments of their social milieu, whatever these sentiments may be.

When conscious activity is wholly concentrated on some one definite purpose, the ultimate result, for most people, is lack of balance accompanied by some form of nervous disorder.

In a just world, there would be no possibility of 'charity'.

John Locke invented common sense, and only Englishmen have had it ever since!

Every great idea starts out as a blasphemy.

Organized people are just too lazy to look for things.

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.

Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.

Beggars do not envy millionaires, though of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful.

I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics.

To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.

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

Love is wise -- Hatred is foolish.

Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.

All that alcohol does for them is to liberate the sense of sin, which reason suppresses in saner moments.

Morality in sexual relations, when it is free from superstition, consists essentially in respect for the other person, and unwillingness to use that person solely as a means of personal gratification, without regard to his or her desires.

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

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

I am firm; YOU are obstinate; HE is a pig-headed fool.

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.

Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers
and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt
of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of
sheep against the practice of eating mutton.

Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a long period, as, for example, ancient Egypt persisted, or does it necessarily contain within itself forces which must bring either decay or explosion?

The legacy of Greece to Western philosophy is Western philosophy.

Logic must no more admit a unicorn than zoology can.

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.

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.

To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future.

St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.

To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.

Heretical views arise when the truth is uncertain, and it is only when the truth is uncertain that censorship is invoked.

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

The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interest of the desire to know.

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

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.