Quotes By Bertrand Russell

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

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.

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.

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.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

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

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.

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.

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.

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.

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.

Sin is geographical.

To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

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.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

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.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.

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.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

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

In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.