Bertrand Russell quotes

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was a renowned British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and social reformer. His influential work spanned various disciplines including philosophy of mind, ethics, and epistemology. Russell was an advocate for rationality, freedom, and peace, actively engaging in political activism throughout his life. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 for his significant contributions to the field. Russell's writings, such as "Principia Mathematica" and "A History of Western Philosophy," continue to shape philosophical discourse and inspire generations of thinkers. His pioneering thoughts and intellectual legacy remain an enduring influence on philosophy and beyond.

Such a man feels himself a citizen of the universe, enjoying freely the spectacle that it offers and the joy that it affords, untroubled by the thoughts of death because he feels himself not really separated from those who will come after him. It is in such a profound instinctive union with the stream of life that the greatest joy is to be found.

- Bertrand Russell

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.

- Bertrand Russell

This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.

- Bertrand Russell

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.

- Bertrand Russell

Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know.

- Bertrand Russell

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.

- Bertrand Russell

Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.

- Bertrand Russell

It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.

- Bertrand Russell

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

- 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

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.

- Bertrand Russell

No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.

- Bertrand Russell

Man is not a solitary animal, and so long as social life survives, self-realization cannot be the supreme principle of ethics

- Bertrand Russell

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

- Bertrand Russell

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

- Bertrand Russell

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

- Bertrand Russell

Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

- Bertrand Russell

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

- Bertrand Russell

Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.

- 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

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

- Bertrand Russell

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

- Bertrand Russell

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.

- 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

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

- 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

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

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

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

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.

- Bertrand Russell