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Bertrand Russell Quotes

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.
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.
Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.
Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.
Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one.
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
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.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
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.
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
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.
None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.
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.
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.
Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
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.
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.
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 good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.
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 infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.
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.
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 theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.
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.
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.
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 secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
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.
Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.