Quotes By Bertrand Russell

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

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

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.

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.

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.

Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.

It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals.

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

Liberty is the right to do what I like; license, the right to do what you like.

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

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.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

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.

The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

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

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

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

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.

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

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

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

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

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

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

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

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.