Quotes By Bertrand Russell

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.

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

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.

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.

A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.

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

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.