Explore Quotes by Bertrand Russell

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.

Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.

Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth.

An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, an Agnostic may hold that the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not worth considering in practice. In that case, he is not far removed from atheism.

I am firm; YOU are obstinate; HE is a pig-headed fool.

The main thing needed to make men happy is intelligence.

Frege has the merit of ... finding a third assertion by recognising the world of logic which is neither mental nor physical.

In all the creative work that I have done, what has come first is a problem, a puzzle involving discomfort.

What will be the good of the conquest of leisure and health, if no one remembers how to use them?

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.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.