Top 50 Bertrand Russell Quotes
1 – “Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” ― Bertrand Russell
2 – “It’s easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.” ― Bertrand Russell
3 – “The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.” ― Bertrand Russell
4 – “Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.” ― Bertrand Russell
5 – “To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.” ― Bertrand Russell
6 – “My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.” ― Bertrand Russell
7 – “Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. The thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid … The thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.” ― Bertrand Russell
8 – “It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.” ― Bertrand Russell
9 – “Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.” ― Bertrand Russell
10 – “When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.” ― Bertrand Russell
11 – “We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.” ― Bertrand Russell
12 – “No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.” ― Bertrand Russell
13 – “Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.” ― Bertrand Russell
14 – “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 Quotes
15 – “One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.” ― Bertrand Russell
16 – “There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.” ― Bertrand Russell
17 – “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.” ― Bertrand Russell
18 – “Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” ― Bertrand Russell
19 – “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” ― Bertrand Russell
20 – “To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already 3-parts dead.” ― Bertrand Russell Quotes on Love and Life
21 – “I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.” ― Bertrand Russell
22 – “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
23 – “Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.” ― Bertrand Russell
24 – “A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.” ― Bertrand Russell
25 – “In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.” ― Bertrand Russel Quotes
26 – “I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.” ― Bertrand Russell
27 – “Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely, to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.” ― Bertrand Russell
28 – “One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” ― Bertrand Russell
29 – “Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people’s.” ― Bertrand Russell Quotes on Happiness
30 – “One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.” ― Bertrand Russell
31 – “So far as I can remember there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.” ― Bertrand Russell
32 – “Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.” ― Bertrand Russell
33 – “Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of great fear.” ― Bertrand Russell
34 – “The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder’s lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.” ― Bertrand Russell Quotes on politics and religion
35 – “If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.” ― Bertrand Russell
36 – “I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.” ― Bertrand Russell
37 – “Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end, the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.” ― Bertrand Russell
38 – “The secret of happiness is this: let your interest be as wide as possible and let your reactions to the things and persons who interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile. ” ― Bertrand Russell
39 – “Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.” ― Bertrand Russell
40 – “To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.” ― Bertrand Russell
41 – “Anything you’re good at contributes to happiness.” ― Bertrand Russell quotes on happiness
42 – “The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.” ― Bertrand Russell
43 – “The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge” ― Bertrand Russell
44 – “When considering marriage one should ask oneself this question; ‘will I be able to talk with this person into old age?’ Everything else is transitory, the most time is spent in conversation.” ― Bertrand Russell
45 – “Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.” ― Bertrand Russell
46 – “Sin is geographical.” ― Best Bertrand Russell Quotes
47 – “I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine. ” ― Bertrand Russell
48 – “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”― Bertrand Russell
50 – “The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.” ― Bertrand Russell
Here are few more motivational and thought-provoking Bertrand Russell Quotes about Love, Power, Education, Hope, Misery, Fear, Marriage, Sex Death, Religion and more.
Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, Unpopular Essays
Brief and powerless is man’s life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, Philosophical Essays
Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, Sceptical Essays
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver … in the end, the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, What I Believe
Boredom is … a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, The Conquest of Happiness
Marriage is for woman the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution. – BERTRAND RUSSELL Quotes on Marriage and Sex, Marriage and Morals
Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, Marriage and Morals
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good ground for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, “An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish,” Unpopular Essays
The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays
Mathematics possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, Mysticism and Logic
The most savage controversies are about those matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish
A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconciously translates what he hears into something he can understand. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, A History of Western Philosophy
The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, Conquest of Happiness
To realize the unimportance of time is the gate to wisdom. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, Mysticism and Logic
The man who is unhappy will, as a rule, adopt an unhappy creed, while the man who is happy will adopt a happy creed; each may attribute his happiness or unhappiness to his beliefs, while the real causation is the other way round. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, The Conquest of Happiness
There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that “remembered” a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, The Analysis of Mind
No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, Justice in War-Time
If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, Autobiography
As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish
If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, Religion and Science
Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, “Freedom in Society”
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, The Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly
It cannot be denied that tact is a virtue. The sort of person who always manages to blurt out the tactless thing, apparently by accident, is a person full of dislike of his or her fellow creatures. But although tact is a virtue, it is very closely allied to certain vices; the line between tact and hypocrisy is a very narrow one. I think the distinction comes in the motive: when it is kindliness that makes us wish to please, our tact is the right sort; when it is fear of offending, or desire to obtain some advantage by flattery, our tact is apt to be of a less amiable kind. – BERTRAND RUSSELL Quotes , Mortals and Others
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism
Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought of duty. To say that it is your duty to love so-and-so is the surest way to cause you to hate him of her. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, Marriage and Morals
When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, Theory of Knowledge
I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man’s place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, “What I Believe”
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, The Conquest of Happiness
Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities. – Best BERTRAND RUSSELL Quotes , The Problems of Philosophy
Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, “University Education,” Fact and Fiction
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, Marriage and Morals
Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate. – BERTRAND RUSSELL Quotes on Capitalism, Sceptical Essays
Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance. – Motivational BERTRAND RUSSELL, letter to Lucy Donnely, Nov. 25, 1902
Manners are necessary because, as a rule, there is a pretence; when our good opinion of others is genuine, manners look after themselves. – BERTRAND RUSSELL, Mortals and Others
After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution progressed to the point at which it generated Neros, Genghis Khans, and Hitlers. This, however, is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return. – Top BERTRAND RUSSELL Quotes, Unpopular Essays