The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. ... But so long as men are not trained to withhold judgment in the absence of evidence, they will be led astray by cocksure prophets, and it is likely that their leaders will be either ignorant fanatics or dishonest charlatans. To endure uncertainty is difficult, but so are most of the other virtues.


Bertrand Russell

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Integrity is not everything, but it is the only thing that matters.
JEFFREY FRY
PEACE IS THE OBJECTIVE TO WAR, BUT THE BLOOD RUNNETH STILL
NATALIE URQUIETA
I know now: what is is all that matters. Not the thing you know is meant to be, not what could be, n...
AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS
The idea is to believe me... but as far as I see the world... to believe is a sin... to trust me one...
DEYTH BANGER
Nothing is ever as good or as bad as it appears to be.
JEFFREY FRY
Why bother with a cunning plan when a simple one will do?
TERRY PRATCHETT
We are far from perfect but willing to be different.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
35. God is entitled to a portion of our income—not because He needs it but because we need to give...
JAMES C. DOBSON
The love you get, is equal to the love you give.
BEN OAK
37. It is better to be single and unhappy than unhappily married.
JAMES C. DOBSON
My eyes hurt... but there is something more... I can't stop listening to horror.... now I am going t...
DEYTH BANGER
Life is not a game. Still, in this life, we choose the games we live to play.
J.R. RIM
There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as Justice. Most of the other virtues are the virtues ...
JOSEPH ADDISON
What is it that makes you so angry, bothers you so deeply, that you're compelled to act?
CRAIG GROESCHEL
To stand on the
brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation—with no feeli...
ASK AND IT IS GIVEN
Our life is a series of moments. Let them all go. Moments. All gathering towards this one.
NOW IS GOOD
To search the sands of a lost desert for truth and justice in this world today you might as well be ...
GARY F EVANS...
The most intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as ...
WALTER BAGEHOT
Everyone is the Umbrella Man and he is everyone. Every cough, sneeze, smile and wave means both ever...
CRAIG CLEVENGER
Mostly people are ignorant, what is the language of painting. You know, they're ignorant. It is ...
M. F. HUSAIN
The fear of God is the only cure for the fear of people.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
We are so free to be who we want to be, and it is the reason why most are so led astray. In the mids...
ANDONI GARCIA
We are so free to be who we want to be. It is the reason why most are so led astray in the midst of ...
ANDONI GARCIA
Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C.
Since opposed principles, or ideologies, are irreconcilable, wars fought over principle will be wars...
ALAN W. WATTS
The battle is not physical, it is spiritual and your mind is the battleground. Keep your mind pure a...
JEANETTE CORON
How do you know if something is real? That’s easy. Does it change you? Does it form you? Does it g...
C. JOYBELL C.
It is what it is, it is what you make it.
JAMES DURBIN
We are so free to be who we want to be, and it is the reason why most are led astray. In the midst o...
ANDONI GARCIA
If the best is possible, than good is never enough and only do the best.
ROBERT SIAHAAN
To be, or not to be, that is the question.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
To be "Spiritual" is not in practicing spiritual rituals. But it is in keeping your heart open , fre...
SUNALLURE
To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don't be.
GOLDA MEIR
To love is to act.
VICTOR HUGO
War is no solution to peace.
BEN OAK
When our lips parted, he sighed. “I love those eyes, angel. When they look at me, I feel like anyt...
BIJOU HUNTER
Man is everywhere in chains, and his chains will not be broken till he feels that it is degrading to...
G.D.H. COLE
They have not forgotten the Mysteries,' she said, ‘they have found them too difficult. They want a...
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
Next generations will not know what is to have childhood.
DANIEL MELGAçO
Nicolas Cage is the best for taking the role of character Joker. He is pretty damn good at jokes!
DEYTH BANGER
Today is about the now, the moment you live in, so do now what you want to do
SOTONYE ANGA
The superstitious, who know how to reprove vices rather than how to teach virtues, and who strive, n...
BARUCH SPINOZA
The secret of my success is my hairspray.
RICHARD GERE
Love is blind, and a deaf-mute too.
PATRICK ROTHFUSS
Be encouraged. Hold your head up high and know God is in control and has a plan for you. Instead of ...
GERMANY KENT
There are men so incorrigibly lazy that no inducement that you can offer will tempt them to work; so...
WILLIAM BOOTH
Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their...
LAURA HILLENBRAND
It is possible that the scrupulously honest man may not grow rich so fast as the unscrupulous and di...
SAMUEL SMILES
Sheep don’t need the shepherd to be what they are. The shepherd needs sheep to be what he is.
LJUPKA CVETANOVA
When I die it will be game over,... but I know one life is short, to be selfish is not the best deci...
DEYTH BANGER
Dedication is the preparation to success!
WERNER BOTHA
The superstitious know how to reproach people for their vices better than they know how to teach the...
BARUCH SPINOZA
Yet I must tell you, that all these graces which are expressed by passions of sorrow, fear, joy, hop...
RICHARD BAXTER
Results are coming in strong, but the market is concerned that this will not be sustained in the nea...
EDGAR PETERS
There are men so incorrigibly lazy that no inducement that you can offer will tempt them to work; s...
WILLIAM BOOTH
To be or not to be. That's not really a question.
JEAN-LUC GODARD
I think that many people will intentionally overlook all of the lifeless facts about their relations...
C. JOYBELL C.
The struggle is part of your story but Everything will be in place in the right situation at a perfe...
NAPZ CHERUB PELLAZO
There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant ...
CHARLES DICKENS
The angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort the...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
It is an amazing feature in the French character that they will let themselves be led away so easily...
MARIE ANTOINETTE
Be kind. We never know what people are going through. Give grace and mercy because one day your circ...
GERMANY KENT
But let a man know that there are things to be known, of which he is ignorant, and it is so much ca...
HORACE MANN
One man may not kill. If he kills a fellow-creature, he is a murderer. If two, ten, a hundred men do...
LEO TOLSTOY
The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. In...
OSCAR WILDE
I am Happy and satisfied with what I am. 10000 will take me wrong, 1000 will go against me, 100 will...
NEHA KOTHARI
If our mind was an ocean then every now and then we would have the perfect storm happening in it.Gar...
GARY F EVANS...
And yet we have what purports, or professes, or is claimed, to be a contract—the Constitution—ma...
LYSANDER SPOONER
But with regard to incomposites, what is being or not being, and truth or falsity? A thing of this s...
ARISTOTLE
So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even ...
WALTER BAGEHOT
When we are hypnotized by the very presence of beauty it will not only feel good within but to the p...
GARY F EVANS...
It is possible that the scrupulously honest man may not grow rich so fast as the unscrupulous and di...
SAMUEL SMILES
And I knew that it was possible he wasn't entirely right for me, but I also knew, in some way...
CATHERINE LACEY
We may claim to believe in God, but we don't want to believe so much that it makes us different.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
That's really sad," Beth said softly, "To have no one left.
R.J. SCOTT
There may indeed be those who would prefer to deny the existence of a God so powerful, rather than b...
RENE DESCARTES
But it is not emancipation that the great majority seeks. When pressed, most men will admit that it ...
HENRY MILLER
Kindness is universal. Sometimes being kind allows others to see the goodness in humanity through yo...
GERMANY KENT
Many people may be heartbroken, but not enough to take action.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as i...
ALBERT CAMUS
I'm not an Emontional, but how???
I live with the thought that "Nothing can be returned, it has...
DEYTH BANGER
I regret that I wasn't more successful with my marriages, but it is what it is.
TED TURNER
It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the ...
JAMES MADISON
Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunat...
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
The maxims are, first, that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far ...
JOHN STUART MILL
Germany will not be able to restore its position as one of the EU's natural leaders so long as its e...
CHARLES GRANT
The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage...
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by ...
JOHN STUART MILL
One of the big concerns is that businesses will start to gear up too quickly in anticipation of a re...
FRANK BADILLO
They that are loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. It is probable that...
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Do I have the courage of being a ruthless man to myself with the complete knowledge on my manner or ...
FEREIDOON YAZDI
Life is an audition.
THOMAS FLAJNIK - ANTICHIMERAPODAL
The Biggest Threat to our Democracy, Freedoms and Future is Leadership that fosters and Appeases the...
MICHAEL HARRIS
Every one is a genius, more or less. No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be even ...
SAMUEL BUTLER
Democracy’s worst fault is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and virtues of their ...
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Further, there are things of which the mind understands one part, but remains ignorant of the other;...
MAIMONIDES
Excessive application during four days of the week is frequently the real cause of the idleness of t...
ADAM SMITH
Most Americans are close to total ignorance about the world. They are ignorant. That is an unhealthy...
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZIńSKI

More Bertrand Russell

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be belie...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and s...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the s...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than c...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on t...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Suddenly the ground seemed to give way beneath me,
and I found myself in quite another region. BERTRAND RUSSELL
The root of the matter the thing I mean is love, Christian love, or compassion. If you feel this, yo...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I am paid by the word, so I always write the shortest words possible.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intel...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate gov...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts- the less you know t...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundame...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Food has replaced sex in my life, now I can't even get into my own pants
BERTRAND RUSSELL
What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent
BERTRAND RUSSELL
For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favorable and unfavorable, masculine and f...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the si...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Science is what you know, philosophy what you don't know.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
In science men have discovered an activity of the very highest value in which they are no longer, as...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a long period, as, for examp...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Religion and Science are two aspects of social life, of which the former has been important as far b...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth more than ruin more even than death. Thought is ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, the chief glory of man.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Thoughts is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privileg...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
With civilized men..., it is, I think, chiefly love of excitement which makes the populace applaud w...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I had supposed until that time that it was quite common for parents to love their children, but the ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be hap...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more tha...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favorable and unfavorable, masculine and fem...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The good life is one inspired by life and guided by knowledge.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by wearine...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
What else is there to make life tolerable? We stand on the shore of an ocean, crying to the night an...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endure...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
There is much pleasure ot be gained from useless knowledge.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The difficulty is old, but none the less real. An omnipotent being who created a world containing ev...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
One should respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of p...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
It will be said that the joy of mental adventure must be rare, that there are few who can appreciate...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
All movements go too far, and this is certainly true of the movement toward subjectivity, whi...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will sea...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
What makes a belief true or false I call a fact. The particular fact that makes a given belief true ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously tran...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the i...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnecte...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a cleve...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere, li...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whet...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchston...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but e...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one that we preach, but do not practice, and a...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Three passions simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life; the longing for love, the se...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to ea...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Do not fear to be excentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd;...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the poss...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves a...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Bad philosophers may have a certain influence; good philosophers, never.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to en...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
This idea of weapons of mass exterminations utterly horrible and is something which no one with one ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translate...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: ins...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor, but honest.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Drunkenness is temporary suicide.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Why should I allow that same God to tell me how to raise my kids, who had to drown His own?
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either w...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to deman...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
What men want is not knowledge, but certainty.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Unless one is taught what to do with success after getting it, achievement of it must inevitably lea...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by t...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literat...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The most valuable things in life are not measured in monetary terms. The really important things are...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
All human activity is prompted by desire.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
One of the signs of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly impor...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Hatred of enemies is easier and more intense than love of friends. But from men who are more anxious...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
In America everybody is of opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from w...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
One of the most interesting and harmful delusions to which men and nations can be subjected is that ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The fundamental defect with fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Folly is perennial, yet the human race has survived.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
An individual human existence should be like a river
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up frie...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which morali...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Conventional people are roused to fury by departures from convention, largely because they regard su...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are ha...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this d...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintell...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
A process which led from the amoebae to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Change is one thing, progress is another. Change is scientific, progress is ethical; change is indub...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either w...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
One must care about a world one will not see.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he fi...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also add that some things are more nearly...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The commonest objection to birth control is that it is against nature.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Most people would rather die than think: many do.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginar...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the poss...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They're what make the...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Sin is geographical.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Watch your thoughts, for they become words.Watch your words, for they become actions.Watch your acti...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no lon...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation. It has nothing to d...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very fe...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodi...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way
BERTRAND RUSSELL
What hunger is in relation to food, zest is in relation to life
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, pain of love lasts a lifetime.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life w...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The qualities most needed are charity and tolerance, not some form of fanatical faith such as is off...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
One should respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of p...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd;...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
An educator should think of a child as a garderner thinks of a plant, as something to be made to gro...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful, and valued because they confer power; they are ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Law in origin was merely a codification of the power of dominant groups, and did not aim at anything...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
To expect a personality to survive the disintegration of the brain is like expecting a cricket club ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
We are all prone to the malady of the introvert who, with the manifold spectacle of the world spread...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and a...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
[T]he infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they inven...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought o...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate gov...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape f...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying t...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface rela...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ide...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with o...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the i...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not reg...
BERTRAND RUSSELL