Bertrand Russell Quotes

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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 (The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 1967-1969)

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

Bertrand Russell (Marriage and Morals, 1929)

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

Bertrand Russell (Television interview on his 92nd birthday, 1964)

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

Bertrand Russell

Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.

Bertrand Russell (Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, 1918)

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

Bertrand Russell (Human Society in Ethics and Politics, 1954)

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

Bertrand Russell

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness, 1930)

The main thing needed to make men happy is intelligence.

Bertrand Russell

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Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

Bertrand Russell (Conquest of Happiness, 1930)

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

Bertrand Russell (Education and the Social Order, 1932)

Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.

Bertrand Russell

Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.

Bertrand Russell

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Bertrand Russell

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

Bertrand Russell (Conquest of Happiness, 1930)

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

Bertrand Russell (What I Believe, 1925)

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty

Bertrand Russell (The Study of Mathematics, 1902)

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

Bertrand Russell (Future of Mankind, 1946)

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

Bertrand Russell (Conquest of Happiness, 1930)

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

Bertrand Russell (Quoted in the Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903 - 1959)

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

Bertrand Russell (Letter to Colette O'Neil, 1921)

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No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.

Bertrand Russell (On Education, Especially in Early Childhood, 1926)

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

Bertrand Russell (Quoted in the Quotable Bertrand Russell, 1993)

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

Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development, 1959)

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

Bertrand Russell (Sceptical Essays, 1928)

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

Bertrand Russell (Has Man a Future?, 1961)

A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.

Bertrand Russell (Theory of Knowledge, 1913)

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

Bertrand Russell (Marriage and Morals, 1929)

The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.

Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development, 1959)

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

Bertrand Russell (Why Men Fight, 1916)

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