Explore Quotes by Bertrand Russell

If you think your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based upon faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting or distorting the minds of the young in what is called 'education.'

I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious.

It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather that the hope of creatingfuture dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.

There are certain things that our age needs. It needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.

Life and hope for the world are to be found only in the deeds of love.

A man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if indeed such a man exists.

To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future.

It appeared to me obvious that the happiness of mankind should be the aim of all action, and I discovered to my surprise that there were those who thought otherwise.

A world full of happiness is not beyond human power to create; the obstacles imposed by inanimate nature are not insuperable. The real obstacles lie in the heart of man, and the cure for these is a firm hope, informed and fortified by thought.

Fundamental happiness depends more than anything else upon what may be called a friendly interest in persons and things.

Any pleasure that does no harm to other people is to be valued.

The satisfaction to be derived from success in a great constructive enterprise is one of the most massive that life has to offer.

Public opinion is always more tyrannical towards those who obviously fear it than towards those who feel indifferent to it.

A democrat need not believe that the majority will always reach a wise decision. He should however believe in the necessity of accepting the decision of the majority, be it wise or unwise, until such a time that the majority reaches another decision.

For love of domination we must substitute equality; for love of victory we must substitute justice; for brutality we must substitute intelligence; for competition we must substitute cooperation. We must learn to think of the human race as one family.

Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the georgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. 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 average man's opinions are much less foolish than they would be if he thought for himself.

All the time that he can spare from the adornment of his person, he devotes to the neglect of his duties.

What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.

To realize the unimportance of time is the gate to wisdom.