bertrand russel quotations

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.


Topic: Ability

Source: None

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

Topic: Beliefs

Source: None

If a law were passed giving six months to every writer of a first book, only the good ones would do it.

Topic: Books

Source: None

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

Topic: Boredom

Source: None

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Topic: Christianity

Source: None

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

Topic: Christianity

Source: None

If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

Topic: Circumstances

Source: None

Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent.

Topic: Civilization

Source: None

Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity.

Topic: Compromise

Source: None

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

Topic: Computer / Technology / Science

Source: None

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

Topic: Death

Source: None

Most people would rather die than think: many do.

Topic: Death

Source: None

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

Topic: Death / Immortality

Source: None

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

Topic: Death / Immortality

Source: None

All human activity is prompted by desire.

Topic: Desire

Source: None

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

Topic: Doubt

Source: None

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.

Topic: Doubt

Source: None

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

Topic: Doubt

Source: None

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.

Topic: Equality

Source: None

Happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly.

Topic: Happiness

Source: None

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

Topic: Hatred

Source: None

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

Topic: Hope

Source: None

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.

Topic: Hypocrisy

Source: None

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

Topic: Illusion

Source: None

There is much pleasure ot be gained from useless knowledge.

Topic: Knowledge

Source: None

There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.

Topic: Knowledge

Source: None

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.

Topic: Love

Source: None

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

Topic: Love

Source: None

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.

Topic: Nature

Source: None

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

Topic: Nervousness

Source: None

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

Topic: Patriotism

Source: None

Philosophy is an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously.

Topic: Philosophy

Source: None

The most valuable things in life are not measured in monetary terms. The really important things are not houses and lands, stocks and bonds, automobiles and real estate, but friendships, trust, confidence, empathy, mercy, love and faith.

Topic: Please title this page. (mercy.html)

Source: None

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

Topic: Property

Source: None

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

Topic: Reason

Source: None

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

Topic: Religion / Beliefs

Source: None

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

Topic: War

Source: None

For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favorable and unfavorable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern; all alike, I should say, result from paucity of experience.

Topic: Women

Source: None