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 widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
Bertrand Russell Quotations
We found 106 matching quotations.
The thing that I should wish to obtain from money would be leisure with security.
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.
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists - that is why they invented hell.
Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
This is patently absurd but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.
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.
The most valuable things in life are not measured in monetary terms. The really important things are not houses and lands, stocks and bonds, automobiles and real state, but friendships, trust, confidence, empathy, mercy, love and faith.
There are two motives for reading a book one, that you enjoy it the other, that you can boast about it.
Even in civilized mankind faint traces of monogamous instincts can be perceived.
Whereas in art nothing worth doing can be done without genius, in science even a very moderate capacity can contribute to a supreme achievement.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
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 creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.
No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.
If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.
Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
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.
Obscenity is what happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
Many people would sooner die than think In fact, they do so.
When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others.
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
In all things it is a good idea to hang a question mark now and then on the things we have taken for granted.
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.
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.
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 man who suffers from a sense of sin is suffering from a particular kind of self-love. In all this vast universe the thing that appears to him of most importance is that he himself should be virtuous. It is a grave defect in certain forms of traditional religion that they have encouraged this particular kind of self-absorption.
When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless.
The secret of happiness is this: Let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather that hostile.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
But all who are not lunitics are agreed about certain things: That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than to be a slave. Many people desire these things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can be refuted by science: Mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
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.
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go.
The human race may well become extinct before the end of the century.
The main thing needed to make men happy is intelligence.
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.
Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.
Change is scientific, progress is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.
There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
Order, unity and continuity are human inventions just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
There is much pleasure ot be gained from useless knowledge.
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.
We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.
A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation.
Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.
Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
Too little liberty brings stagnation and too much brings chaos.
The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
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.
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.
Hatred of enemies is easier and more intense than love of friends. But from men who are more anxious to injure opponents than to benefit the world at large no great good is to be expected.
This is one of those views which are so absolutely absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them.
I should wish to see a world in which education aimed at mental freedom rather than imprisoning the minds of the young in a rigid armor of dogma calculated to protect them though life against the shafts of impartial evidence.
It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.
The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so; at other times he thinks about others things.
Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.
Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.
War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
Most people would sooner die than think; in fact they do so.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.
It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.
The mind is a strange machine which can combine the materials offered to it in the most astonishing ways.
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.
Fear is, I believe, a most effective tool in destroying the soul of an individual--and the soul of a people.
We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach.
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
All movements go too far.
What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.
Drunkenness is temporary suicide.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection.
Sin is geographical.
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
Every living thing is a sort of imperialist, seeking to transform as much as possible of its environment into itself.