Bertrand Russell Quotes
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.
Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.
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 most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition.
A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.
To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities.
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.
Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.
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.
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
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.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
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.
This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.
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.
In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.
The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
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.
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.
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
