Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

• 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.
• All movements go too far.
• Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
• Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.
• Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.
• 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.
• I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
• If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.
• 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 paradise in a few years.
• 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.
• 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.
• It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
• 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.
• Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
• Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.
• Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
• Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
• No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
• Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.
• Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position.
• Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
• Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country.
• Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
• So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
• The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
• The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
• The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection.
• The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
• 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.
• The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
• 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 in poetry.
• The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.
• The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
• There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
• There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
• There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
• This is one of those views which are so absolutely absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them.
• This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.
• To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
• Too little liberty brings stagnation and too much brings chaos.
• War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
• What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.
• Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality. ("Am I An Atheist Or An Agnostic?", 1947)
• When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. ("Am I An Atheist Or An Agnostic?", 1947)
• When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless. ("Am I An Atheist Or An Agnostic?", 1947)
• Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact. (Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 1)
• A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation. (Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 10)
• Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. (Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 12)
• To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level. (Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 14)
• One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. (Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 5)
• One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways. (Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 9)
• Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. (Impact of Science on Society (1952) ch. 1)
• To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead. (Marriage and Morals (1929) ch. 19)
• The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible. (Marriage and Morals (1929) ch. 5)
• Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true. (Mysticism and Logic (1917) ch. 4)
• Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day. (Sceptical Essays (1928), "Dreams and Facts")
• We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach. (Sceptical Essays (1928), "Eastern and Western Ideals of Happiness")
• It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true. (Sceptical Essays (1928), "On the Value of Scepticism")
• It is obvious that 'obscenity' is not a term capable of exact legal definition; in the practice of the Courts, it means 'anything that shocks the magistrate.' (Sceptical Essays (1928), "Recrudescence of Puritanism")
• 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. (The Philosophy of Logical Atomism)
• Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. (Unpopular Essays (1950), "Outline of Intellectual Rubbish")
• Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. (Unpopular Essays (1950), "Outline of Intellectual Rubbish")

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