Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, mathematician, and social activist. He was one of the founders of analytic philosophy and is widely considered to be one of the 20th century's most important logicians. He wrote extensively on logic, mathematics, philosophy of language, epistemology, and social and political issues. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Bertrand Russell on happiness, life, war.
An Honest politician will not be tolerated by a democracy unless he is very stupid ... because only a very stupid man can honestly share the prejudices of more than half the nation.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.
War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
Grasshopper always wrong in argument with chicken.
Bertrand Russell inspirational quote
Bertrand Russell Image Quotes
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education. — Bertrand Russell
Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.
War does not determine who is right - only who is left. — Bertrand Russell
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. — Bertrand Russell
A stupid man's report of what clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
The problem with the wise is they are so filled with doubts while the dull are so certain.
The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
It's coexistence or no existence.
Every great idea starts out as a blasphemy.
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
All human activity is prompted by desire.
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
Bertrand Russell Quotes About Happiness
I believe four ingredients are necessary for happiness: health, warm personal relations, sufficient means to keep you from want, and successful work. — Bertrand Russell
Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give. — Bertrand Russell
The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible. — Bertrand Russell
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. — Bertrand Russell
Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed. — Bertrand Russell
The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of happiness he has and the less he is at the mercy of fate, since if he loses one thing he can fall back upon another. — Bertrand Russell
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. — Bertrand Russell
Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people's. — Bertrand Russell
The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we live. — Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell Quotes About Life
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead. — Bertrand Russell
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. — Bertrand Russell
Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics. — Bertrand Russell
Boys and girls should be taught respect for each other's liberty... and that jealousy and possessiveness kill love. — Bertrand Russell
The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest. — Bertrand Russell
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 state, but friendships, trust, confidence, empathy, mercy, love and faith. — Bertrand Russell
Life is just one cup of coffee after another, and don't look for anything else. — Bertrand Russell
The discipline in your life should be one determined by your own desires and your own needs, not put upon you by society or authority. — Bertrand Russell
Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim. — Bertrand Russell
If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. — Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell Quotes About War
When two great powers disagree about anything - it doesn't matter what - they must find a way to settle it somehow by arbitration or by negotiation, not by war or threat of war. — Bertrand Russell
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess. — Bertrand Russell
Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict. — Bertrand Russell
There are three ways of securing a society that shall be stable as regards population. The first is that of birth control, the second that of infanticide or really destructive wars, and the third that of general misery except for a powerful minority. — Bertrand Russell
I read Zuleika Dobson with pleasure. It represents the Oxford that the two World Wars have destroyed with a charm that is not likely to be reproduced anywhere in the world for the next thousand years. — Bertrand Russell
Those who in principle oppose birth control are either incapable of arithmetic or else in favour of war, pestilence and famine as permanent features of human life. — Bertrand Russell
This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible and is something which no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate. — Bertrand Russell
The three main extra-rational activities in modern life are religion, war, and love. all these are extra-rational, but love is not anti-rational, that is to say, a reasonable man may reasonably rejoice in its existence — Bertrand Russell
Power is sweet; it is a drug, the desire for which increases with a habit. — Bertrand Russell
The best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration. — Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell Quotes About Love
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. — Bertrand Russell
Love should be a tree whose roots are deep in the earth, but whose branches extend into heaven. — Bertrand Russell
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. — Bertrand Russell
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power. — Bertrand Russell
For love of domination we must substitute equality; for love of victory we must substitute justice; for brutality we must substitute intelligence; for competition we must substitute cooperation. We must learn to think of the human race as one family. — Bertrand Russell
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. — Bertrand Russell
To fear love is to fear life. — Bertrand Russell
It's easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you. — Bertrand Russell
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. — Bertrand Russell
The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique. — Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell Quotes About Thinking
And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence — Bertrand Russell
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. — Bertrand Russell
I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious. — Bertrand Russell
Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality. — Bertrand Russell
I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. — Bertrand Russell
If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts. — Bertrand Russell
It seems to me a fundamental dishonesty, and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it's useful and not because you think it's true. — Bertrand Russell
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them. — Bertrand Russell
I do not believe that science per se is an adequate source of happiness, nor do I think that my own scientific outlook has contributed very greatly to my own happiness, which I attribute to defecating twice a day with unfailing regularity. — Bertrand Russell
Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason. Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety. — Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell Quotes About God
We are told that Sin consists in acting contrary to God's commands, but we are also told that God is omnipotent. If He is, nothing contrary to His will can occur; therefore when the sinner disobeys His commands, He must have intended this to happen. — Bertrand Russell
Unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is meaningless. — Bertrand Russell
God and Satan alike are essentially human figures, the one a projection of ourselves, the other of our enemies. — Bertrand Russell
RELIGION: A set of beliefs held as dogmas, dominating the conduct of life, going beyond or contrary to evidence, and inculcated by methods which are emotional or authoritarian, not intellectual. — Bertrand Russell
Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God, or with mystic insight, or with any of the matters with which the more elevated and spiritual moralists are concerned. — Bertrand Russell
...the nonexistence of God makes more difference to some of us than to others. To me, it means that there is no absolute morality, that moralities are sets of social conventions devised by humans to satisfy their needs. — Bertrand Russell
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. — Bertrand Russell
I was told that The Chinese said they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic for an atheist. — Bertrand Russell
If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument... The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. — Bertrand Russell
The more you complain the longer God lets you live — Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell Quotes About Marriage
When considering marriage one should ask oneself this question; 'will I be able to talk with this person into old age?' Everything else is transitory, the most time is spent in conversation. — Bertrand Russell
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. — Bertrand Russell
Many a marriage hardly differs from prostitution, except being harder to escape from. — Bertrand Russell
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake. — Bertrand Russell
I never held Negroes to be inherently inferior. The statement in Marriage and Morals refers to environmental conditioning. I have had it withdrawn from subsequent editions because it is clearly ambiguous. — Bertrand Russell
It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit; divorced from it, they remain barren. — Bertrand Russell
It seems clear to me that marriage ought to be constituted by children, and relations not involving children ought to be ignored by the law and treated as indifferent by public opinion. It is only through children that relations cease to be a purely private matter. — Bertrand Russell
A marriage is likely to be called happy if neither party ever expected to get much happiness out of it. — Bertrand Russell
Even in civilized mankind faint traces of monogamous instinct can be perceived. — Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell Quotes About Philosophy
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd. — Bertrand Russell
Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. — Bertrand Russell
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know. — Bertrand Russell
Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty. — Bertrand Russell
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. — Bertrand Russell
Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves. — Bertrand Russell
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. — Bertrand Russell
Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance. — Bertrand Russell
The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy. — Bertrand Russell
(on A History of Western Philosophy) I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if, indeed, such man exists. — Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell Quotes About Logical
Logic must no more admit a unicorn than zoology can. — Bertrand Russell
Common sense, however it tries,
cannot avoid being surprised from time to time. — Bertrand Russell
When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself. — Bertrand Russell
All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. — Bertrand Russell
The conception of the necessary unit of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of the imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the straitwaistcoated benevolent institution, which idealism palms off as the totality of being. — Bertrand Russell
A priori Logical propositions are such as can be known a priori without study of the actual world. — Bertrand Russell
The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists of the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself. — Bertrand Russell
Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say. — Bertrand Russell
A logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible, since these serve much the same purpose as is served by experiments in physical science. — Bertrand Russell
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. — Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell Quotes About Insightful
Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction. — Bertrand Russell
Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new. — Bertrand Russell
Insight, untested and unsupported, is an uncertain guarantee of the truth. — Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell Quotes About World
A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. — Bertrand Russell
No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? — Bertrand Russell
The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. — Bertrand Russell
Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery, and in such a world hopes could only be irrational. — Bertrand Russell
I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. — Bertrand Russell
He will see himself and life and the world as truly as our human limitations will permit; realizing the brevity and minuteness of human life, he will realize also that in individual minds is concentrated whatever of value the known universe contains. — Bertrand Russell
One must care about a world one will not see. — Bertrand Russell
The world that we must seek is a world in which the creative spirit is alive, in which life is an adventure full of joy and hope, based rather upon the impulse to construct than upon the desire to retain what we possess or to seize what is possessed by others. — Bertrand Russell
If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full. — Bertrand Russell
The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress. — Bertrand Russell
Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame. — Bertrand Russell
Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false. — Bertrand Russell
What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy. — Bertrand Russell
No one gossips about other people's secret virtues. — Bertrand Russell
To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century. — Bertrand Russell
Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves. — Bertrand Russell
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. — Bertrand Russell
People are zealous for a cause when they are not quite positive that it is true. — Bertrand Russell
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. — Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell Famous Quotes And Sayings
The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other. — Bertrand Russell
Religion is based ... mainly upon fear ... fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. — Bertrand Russell
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education. — Bertrand Russell
Science does not aim at establishing immutable truths and eternal dogmas; its aim is to approach the truth by successive approximations, without claiming that at any stage final and complete accuracy has been achieved. — Bertrand Russell
War does not determine who is right - only who is left. — Bertrand Russell
When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think. — Bertrand Russell
More important than the curriculum is the question of the methods of teaching and the spirit in which the teaching is given — Bertrand Russell
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought. — Bertrand Russell
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd. — Bertrand Russell
Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power. — Bertrand Russell
The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible. — Bertrand Russell
Bolshevism is to be reckoned with Mohammedanism rather than with Christianity and Buddhism. Christianity and Buddhism are primarily personal religions, with mystical doctrines and a love of contemplation. Mohammedanism and Bolshevism are practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of the world. — Bertrand Russell
Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers
and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt
of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of
sheep against the practice of eating mutton. — Bertrand Russell
The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts- the less you know the hotter you get. — Bertrand Russell
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines. — Bertrand Russell
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. — Bertrand Russell
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. — Bertrand Russell
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. — Bertrand Russell
The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation. — Bertrand Russell
The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and start From the slightest pain or equal foe. — Bertrand Russell
Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities. — Bertrand Russell
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. — Bertrand Russell
It's coexistence or no existence. — Bertrand Russell
By self-interest, Man has become gregarious, but in instinct he has remained to a great extent solitary; hence the need of religion and morality to reinforce self-interest. — Bertrand Russell
If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody, and no unemployment — assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to use so much leisure. — Bertrand Russell
Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling? — Bertrand Russell
The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself. — Bertrand Russell
Most human beings, though in varying degrees, desire to control, not only their own lives but also the lives of others — Bertrand Russell
No man treats a motorcar as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behavior to sin; he does not say, 'You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.' He attempts to find out what is wrong and to set it right. — Bertrand Russell
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong. — Bertrand Russell
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons. — Bertrand Russell
Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos. — Bertrand Russell
Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable. — Bertrand Russell
No great achievement is possible without persistent work. — Bertrand Russell
The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics. — Bertrand Russell
It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go. — Bertrand Russell
The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours. — Bertrand Russell
Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me. — Bertrand Russell
Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation. — Bertrand Russell
Human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those who seem least to demand it. — Bertrand Russell
Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy. — Bertrand Russell
Faith: a firm belief for which there is no evidence. — Bertrand Russell
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. — Bertrand Russell
Measures of sterilization should, in my opinion, be very definitely confined to persons who are mentally defective — Bertrand Russell
The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. — Bertrand Russell
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country. — Bertrand Russell
Life Lessons by Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell taught that life should be lived with passion and purpose, and that we should strive to make the world a better place.
He also emphasized the importance of open-mindedness and the need to question existing beliefs and assumptions.
Finally, he argued that we should strive to be honest and humble in our interactions with others, and to cultivate a sense of compassion and understanding.
Citation
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