Bertrand Russell made his first pioneering contributions within the branch of philosophy that deals with logic and mathematics. Here are some Bertrand Russell Quotes.
“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.”
“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”
“We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.”
“You must believe that you can help bring about a better world.”
“Common sense, however it tries, cannot avoid being surprised from time to time.”
“All human activity is prompted by desire.”
“No great achievement is possible without persistent work.”
“To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”
“War does not determine who is right – only who is left.”
“Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.”
“Love cannot exists as a duty; to tell a child that it ought to love its parents and its brother and sisters is utterly useless, if not worse.”
“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.”
“Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.”
“Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.”
“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”
“Love as a relation between men and women was ruined by the desire to make sure of the legitimacy of children.”
“A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.”
“Drunkenness is temporary suicide.”
“We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.”
“If we were all given by magic the power to read each other’s thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.”
Bertrand Russell quotes philosophy
“Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don’t know.”
“The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.”
“I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.”
“Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.”
“When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.”
“The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interest of the desire to know.”
“The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.”
Bertrand Russell quotes about life
“Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.”
“Unless you assume a God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless.”
“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.”
“Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that is happiness.”
“Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it.”
“Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.”
“Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.”
“We know too much and feel too little.”
“To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.”
“The happy life is to an extraordinary extent the same as the good life.”
“The satisfaction to be derived from success in a great constructive enterprise is one of the most massive that life has to offer.”
“Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.”
“Change is scientific; progress is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.”
“Belief systems provide a programme which relieves the necessity of thought.”
“Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.”
“All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.”
“Life is just one cup of coffee after another, and don’t look for anything else.”
“Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.”
“What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.”
“Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.”
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”
“No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.”
“If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.”
“Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.”
“The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.”
“Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.”
“There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.”
“Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame.”
“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”
“To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
“The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.”
“Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people’s happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.”
“To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.”
“There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”
“Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.”
“Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.”
“We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.”
“Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.”
“Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.”
“Any pleasure that does no harm to other people is to be valued.”
“The problem with the wise is they are so filled with doubts while the dull are so certain.”
“A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.”
“One must care about a world one will not see.”
“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”
“Cruel men believe in a cruel god and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly god, and they would be kindly in any case.”
“Beware the man of the single book”