Bertrand Russell Quotes

Work is of two kinds: first altering a position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively...

What I Have Lived ForThree passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the lo...

The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces the more astonish...

A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked not...

I have frequently experienced myself the mood in which I felt that all is vanity; I have emerged fro...

I have been merely oppressed by the weariness and tedium and vanity of things lately: nothing stirs ...

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

But without going to such extremes prudence may easily involve the loss of some of the best things i...

All human activity is prompted by desire.

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

Real life is to most men a long second best a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possi...

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more tha...

Real life is to most men ... a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.

Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by t...

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

Over a billion people believe in Allah without truly knowing what Allah supposedly stands for or wha...

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

I do not believe that any peacock envies another peacock his tail because every peacock is persuade...

Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist since at least half of the sins of mankind are caused b...

There was a footpath leading across fields to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone to watch t...

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so,it will be necessary fir...

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

From the standpoint of the upper classes, the system had many merits. They felt that what was paid o...

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

Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.

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

For the young, there is nothing unattainable; a good thing desired with the whole force of a passion...

Grammar and ordinary language are bad guides to metaphysics. A great book might be written showing t...

'Change' is scientific 'progress' is ethical change is indubitable whereas progress is a matter o...

Fear is the main source of superstition and one of the main sources of cruelty.

All forms of fear produce fatigue.

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

The belief that personality is mysterious and irreducible has no scientific warrant, and is accepted...

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love...

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

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

The habit of looking into the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what...

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

Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative a momentary cessa...

Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world where they can ...

There was never any reason to believe in any innate superiority of the male except his superior mus...

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

Change is scientific, ‘progress’ is ethical. Change is indubitable whereas progress is a matter of c...

We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and ...

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin ...

Having knowledge of an unethical act and allowing it to continue can spread a contagion that can aff...

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the s...

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

Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so...

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long...

The secret of happiness is this: Let your interests be as wide as possible and let your reactions t...

Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have...

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

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

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

It is essential to happiness that our way of living should spring from our own deep impulses and not...

Boredom is essentially a thwarted desire for events, not necessarily pleasant ones, but just occurre...

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

Education should aim at destroying free will so thatpupils thus schooled, will be incapable througho...

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

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

A drop of water is not immortal; it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop ...

It is preoccupation with possession more than anything else that prevents men from living freely a...

Mathematics takes us still further from what is human into the region of absolute necessity, to whic...

The true spirit of delight the exultation the sense of being more than Man which is the touchstone...

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

Advocates of capitalism like to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in on...

In adolescence, I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was...

In the visible world, the Milky Way is a tiny fragment; within this fragment, the solar system is an...

It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit divorced from it they remain ...

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard chiefly I think because it is so ...

We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that...

We have two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice and the other w...

To be able to use leisure intelligently will be the last product of an intelligent civilization.

The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little,...

What hunger is in relation to food zest is in relation to life.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves and wis...

One must care about a world one will not see.

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

A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked not...

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

The pleasure of work is open to anyone who can develop some specialised skill, provided that he can ...

All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, b...

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at ...

No matter how eloquently a dog may bark he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest.

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

Nothing is so exhausting as indecision and nothing is so futile.

In the Second World War he took no public part, having escaped to a neutral country just before its ...

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

A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing ...

If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts I suppose the first effect wo...

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already 3-parts dead.

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

I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social. Personal: to care for what is nob...

One of the causes of unhappiness among intellectuals in the present day is that so many of them, esp...

Every man wherever he goes is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions which move with hi...

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

...what is the use of making everybody rich if the rich themselves are miserable?

If our logic is to find the common world intelligible, it must not be hostile, but must be inspired ...

There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we ...