Bertrand Russell quotes offer timeless wisdom on topics such as truth, logic, love, and the human condition. As one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, Russell’s words continue to inspire deep thought and critical reflection.
Whether you’re interested in philosophy, ethics, or social commentary, these Bertrand Russell quotes provide valuable insights into life and reason.
From his sharp wit to his profound observations, each quote reflects his commitment to intellectual freedom and rational thinking. Explore this collection of Bertrand Russell quotes to gain a deeper understanding of his powerful legacy and enduring ideas.
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Today Bertrand Russell Quotes ideas
“The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interest of the desire to know.” — Bertrand Russell
“All human activity is prompted by desire.” — Bertrand Russell
“The road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.” — Bertrand Russell
“A marriage is likely to be called happy if neither party ever expected to get much happiness out of it.” — Bertrand Russell
“I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose.” — Bertrand Russell
“The goods of the mind are at least as important as the goods of the body.” — Bertrand Russell
“The resistance to a new idea increases by the square of its importance.” — Bertrand Russell
“It is in our hearts that evil lies, and it is from our hearts that it must be plucked out.” — Bertrand Russell
“Broadly speaking, we are in the middle of a race between human skill as a means and human folly as an end.” — Bertrand Russell
“Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos.” — Bertrand Russell
“Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.” — Bertrand Russell
“Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.” — Bertrand Russell
“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.” — Bertrand Russell
“To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.” — Bertrand Russell
“Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth.” — Bertrand Russell
“Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.” — Bertrand Russell
“What is matter? Never mind.” — Bertrand Russell
“No rules, however wise, are a substitute for affection and tact.” — Bertrand Russell
“Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.” — Bertrand Russell
“Civilization checks impulse not only through forethought, which is a self-administered check, but also through law, custom, and religion.” — Bertrand Russell
Best Quotes from Bertrand Russell
“El tiempo que disfrutas perder no es tiempo perdido.” — Bertrand Russell
“Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.” — Bertrand Russell
“Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?” — Bertrand Russell
“Logic must no more admit a unicorn than zoology can.” — Bertrand Russell
“My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.” — Bertrand Russell
“The experience of overcoming fear is extraordinarily delightful.” — Bertrand Russell
“Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.” — Bertrand Russell
“Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion go hand in hand.” — Bertrand Russell
“There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere.” — Bertrand Russell
“To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.” — Bertrand Russell
“Animal rights, taken to their logical conclusion, mean votes for oysters.” — Bertrand Russell
“The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.” — Bertrand Russell
“All’s well that ends well; which is the epitaph I should put on my tombstone if I were the last man left alive.” — Bertrand Russell
“An individual human existence should be like a river.” — Bertrand Russell
“Brief and powerless is man’s life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.” — Bertrand Russell
“The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.” — Bertrand Russell
“I dislike Communism because it is undemocratic, and capitalism because it favors exploitation.” — Bertrand Russell
“Stupidity and unconscious bias often work more damage than venality.” — Bertrand Russell
“Unhappy business men, I am convinced, would increase their happiness more by walking six miles every day than by any conceivable change of philosophy.” — Bertrand Russell
“Envy is the basis of democracy.” — Bertrand Russell
Short Quotes of Bertrand Russell
“It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.” — Bertrand Russell
“What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.” — Bertrand Russell
“The happy life is to an extraordinary extent the same as the good life.” — Bertrand Russell
“Mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else.” — Bertrand Russell
“How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?” — Bertrand Russell
“As soon as we abandon our reason and are content to rely on authority, there is no end to our troubles.” — Bertrand Russell
“The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.” — Bertrand Russell
“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth – more than ruin, more even than death.” — Bertrand Russell
“If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.” — Bertrand Russell
“Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau.” — Bertrand Russell
“Many a marriage hardly differs from prostitution, except being harder to escape from.” — Bertrand Russell
“Will machines destroy emotions or will emotions destroy machines?” — Bertrand Russell
“Happiness, as is evident, depends partly upon external circumstances and partly upon oneself.” — Bertrand Russell
“Philosophy bakes no bread.” — Bertrand Russell
“I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy.” — Bertrand Russell
“Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.” — Bertrand Russell
“My first advice on how not to grow old would be to choose you ancestors carefully.” — Bertrand Russell
“The very best proof that something can be done is that someone has already done it.” — Bertrand Russell
“Great God in Boots! – the ontological argument is sound!” — Bertrand Russell
“Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.” — Bertrand Russell
Simple Quotes Bertrand Russell
“What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.” — Bertrand Russell
“Some people would rather die than think.” — Bertrand Russell
“The above proposition is occasionally useful.” — Bertrand Russell
“The luxury to disparage freedom is the privilege of those who already possess it.” — Bertrand Russell
“The dictum that human nature cannot be changed is one of those tiresome platitudes that conceal from the ignorant the depths of their own ignorance.” — Bertrand Russell
“Almost all education has a political motive.” — Bertrand Russell
“Drunkeness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness.” — Bertrand Russell
“Power is sweet; it is a drug, the desire for which increases with a habit.” — Bertrand Russell
“War grows out of ordinary human nature.” — Bertrand Russell
“A man of Seville is shaved by the Barber of Seville if and only if the man does not shave himself. Does the barber shave himself?” — Bertrand Russell
“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
“Be isolated, be ignored, be attacked, be in doubt, be frightened, but do not be silenced.” — Bertrand Russell
“A fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic institutions impossible.” — Bertrand Russell
“Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.” — Bertrand Russell
“The best practical advice I can give to the present generation is to practice the virtue which the Christians call love.” — Bertrand Russell
“The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.” — Bertrand Russell
“Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely.” — Bertrand Russell
“Choose your parents wisely.” — Bertrand Russell
“It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals.” — Bertrand Russell
“Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness is dead.” — Bertrand Russell
New Bertrand Russell Best Quotes
“The human race may well become extinct before the end of the century.” — Bertrand Russell
“Either man will abolish war, or war will abolish man.” — Bertrand Russell
“It is only through imagination that men become aware of what the world might be; without it, ‘progress’ would become mechanical and trivial.” — Bertrand Russell
“Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle.” — Bertrand Russell
“I believe four ingredients are necessary for happiness: health, warm personal relations, sufficient means to keep you from want, and successful work.” — Bertrand Russell
“Life is just one cup of coffee after another, and don’t look for anything else.” — Bertrand Russell
“Why do people read? The answer, as regards the great majority, is: ‘They don’t.” — Bertrand Russell
“Change is scientific; progress is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.” — Bertrand Russell
“We love our habits more than our income, often more than our life.” — Bertrand Russell
“The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.” — Bertrand Russell
“People who are vigorous and brutal often find war enjoyable.” — Bertrand Russell
“The purpose of education is to teach a defense against eloquence.” — Bertrand Russell
“If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full.” — Bertrand Russell
“Obviousness is always the enemy of correctness.” — Bertrand Russell
“The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich.” — Bertrand Russell
“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.” — Bertrand Russell
“There’s a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire – poison and antidote.” — Bertrand Russell
“My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.” — Bertrand Russell
“In human relations one should penetrate to the core of loneliness in each person and speak to that.” — Bertrand Russell
“Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.” — Bertrand Russell
Famous Quotes By Bertrand Russell
“It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.” — Bertrand Russell
“People are zealous for a cause when they are not quite positive that it is true.” — Bertrand Russell
“Ants and savages put strangers to death.” — Bertrand Russell
“A man without a bias cannot write interesting history – if indeed such a man exists.” — Bertrand Russell
“Envy was one of the most potent causes of unhappiness.” — Bertrand Russell
“It’s easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.” — Bertrand Russell
“It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.” — Bertrand Russell
“All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.” — Bertrand Russell
“Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.” — Bertrand Russell
“Teachers are more than any other group the guardians of civilization.” — Bertrand Russell
“There is no difference between someone who eats too little and sees Heaven and someone who drinks too much and sees snakes.” — Bertrand Russell
“Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.” — Bertrand Russell
“Thinking you know when in fact you don’t is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone.” — Bertrand Russell
“The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty.” — Bertrand Russell
“Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.” — Bertrand Russell
“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.” — Bertrand Russell
“A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing anxiety.” — Bertrand Russell
“Education is not to be viewed as something like filling a vessel with water but, rather, assisting a flower to grow in its own way.” — Bertrand Russell
“Continuity of purpose is one of the most essential ingredients of happiness in the long run, and for most men that comes chiefly through their work.” — Bertrand Russell
“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.” — Bertrand Russell
Deep Bertrand Russell Quote on Fascism
“Look at me. Look at me is one of the fundamental desires of human heart.” — Bertrand Russell
“The key to happiness is accepting one unpleasant reality every day.” — Bertrand Russell
“Machines have altered our way of life, but not our instincts. Consequently, there is maladjustment.” — Bertrand Russell
“Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.” — Bertrand Russell
“I did not know I loved you until I heard myself telling so, for one instance I thought, “Good God, what have I said?” and then I knew it was true.” — Bertrand Russell
“Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning.” — Bertrand Russell
“A proverb is one man’s wit and all men’s wisdom.” — Bertrand Russell
“Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.” — Bertrand Russell
“A good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times make it almost seem like a live teacher.” — Bertrand Russell
“Mathematics is, I believe, the chief source of the belief in eternal and exact truth, as well as a sensible intelligible world.” — Bertrand Russell
“Great Empedocles, that ardent soul, Leapt into Etna, and was roasted whole.” — Bertrand Russell
“Fanaticism is the danger of the world, and always has been, and has done untold harm. I might almost say that I was fanatical against fanaticism.” — Bertrand Russell
“If everything has a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just be the world as God…” — Bertrand Russell
“The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.” — Bertrand Russell
“When all experts agree, you need to watch out.” — Bertrand Russell
“And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.” — Bertrand Russell
“To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.” — Bertrand Russell
“We need a science to save us from science.” — Bertrand Russell
“There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.” — Bertrand Russell
“Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.” — Bertrand Russell
Good Bertrand Arthur William Russell Quotes
“Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.” — Bertrand Russell
“Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.” — Bertrand Russell
“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.” — Bertrand Russell
“Escape from boredom is one of the really powerful desires of almost all human beings.” — Bertrand Russell
“The Axiom of Choice is necessary to select a set from an infinite number of socks, but not an infinite number of shoes.” — Bertrand Russell
“There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.” — Bertrand Russell
“Mysticism is, in essence, little more than a certain intensity and depth of feeling in regard to what is believed about the universe.” — Bertrand Russell
“The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading.” — Bertrand Russell
“The atomic bomb embodies the results of a combination genius and patience as remarkable as any in the history of mankind.” — Bertrand Russell
“No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor, but honest.” — Bertrand Russell
“Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness.” — Bertrand Russell
“All religions are both harmful and untrue.” — Bertrand Russell
“The axiomatic method has many advantages over honest work.” — Bertrand Russell
“None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error.” — Bertrand Russell
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