Quotes by Bertrand Russell

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.”

“Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.”

“Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.”

“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.”

“Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.”

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

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

“Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame.”

“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.”

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

“Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.”

“Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“Sin is geographical.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.”

“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

“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.”

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

“There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.”

“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.”

“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.”