Explore Quotes by Bertrand Russell

It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit; divorced from it, they remain barren.

Children, after being limbs of Satan in traditional theology and mystically illuminated angels in the minds of educational reformers, have reverted to being little devils; not theological demons inspired by the evil one, but scientific Freudian abominations inspired by the unconscious.

There is no difference between someone who eats too little and sees Heaven and someone who drinks too much and sees snakes.

Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.

Change is scientific; progress is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.

Love, children, and work, are the great sources of fertilizing contact between the individual and the rest of the world.

The essence of the liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held; instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.

Opinions which justify cruelty are inspired by cruel impulses.

What science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

Mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else.

Right conduct can never, except by some rare accident, be promoted by ignorance or hindered by knowledge.

Man can be stimulated by hope or driven by fear, but the hope and the fear must be vivid and immediate if they are to be effective without producing weariness.

Science, by itself cannot, supply us with an ethic.

We are all prone to the malady of the introvert who with the manifold spectacle of the world spread out before him, turns away and gazes only upon the emptiness within.

Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies, and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him.

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin, more even than death.

The best practical advice I can give to the present generation is to practice the virtue which the Christians call love.

From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization of Islam flourished. What was lost to christendom at this time was not lost to civilization, but quite the contrary.

Our use of the phrase 'The Dark Ages' to cover the period from 600 to 1000 marks our undue concentration on Western Europe. [...] From India to Spain, the brilliant civilisation of Islam flourished. What was lost to Christendom at this time was not lost to civilisation, but quite the contrary. [...] To us it seems that West-European civilisation is civilisation, but this is a narrow view.

No great achievement is possible without persistent work.

It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.