Quotes By Bertrand Russell

To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

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.

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?

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

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.

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.

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