Bertrand Russell Quotes

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.

Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attibutable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.

Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?

It is essential to happiness that our way of living should spring from our own deep impulses and not from the accidental tastes and desires of those who happen to be our neighbors, or even our relations.

There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.

Your writing is never as good as you hoped; but never as bad as you feared.

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?

No man treats a motorcar as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behavior to sin; he does not say, 'You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.' He attempts to find out what is wrong and to set it right.

If we were all given by magic the power to read each other’s thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be almost all friendships would be dissolved; the second effect, however, might be excellent, for a world without any friends would be felt to be intolerable, and we should learn to like each other without needing a veil of illusion to conceal from ourselves that we did not think each other absolutely perfect.

Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possiblities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what the may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familar things in an unfamilar aspect

Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.

I say people who feel they must have a faith or religion in order to face life are showing a kind of cowardice, which in any other sphere would be considered contemptible. But when it is in the religious sphere it is thought admirable, and I cannot admire cowardice whatever sphere it is in.

The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:

1- Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2- Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3- Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4- When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5- Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6- Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7- Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8- Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9- Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10- Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

There was a footpath leading across fields to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics.