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Bertrand Russell

484 quotes

• “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 (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A European who goes to New York and Chicago sees the future... when he goes to Asia he sees the past.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practise, and another which we practise but seldom preach.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is obvious that "obscenity" is not a term capable of exact legal definition; in the practice of the Courts, it means "anything that shocks the magistrate.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “William James used to preach the "will-to-believe." For my part, I should wish to preach the "will-to-doubt." None of our beliefs are quite true; all at least have a penumbra of vagueness and error. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The State is a collection of officials, different for difference purposes, drawing comfortable incomes so long as the status quo is preserved. The only alteration they are likely to desire in the status quo is an increase of bureaucracy and the power of bureaucrats.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Americans need rest, but do not know it. I believe this to be a large part of the explanation of the crime wave in the United States.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If human nature were unchangeable, as ignorant people still suppose it to be, the situation would indeed be hopeless.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one – particularly if he plays golf, which he usually does.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Introduction to The New Generation (1930)

• “It is likely that America will be more important during the next century or two, but after that it may well be the turn of China.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to Rachel Gleason Brooks, May 5, 1930

• “I quite understand the principle of confining employment as far as possible to the British without regard for efficiency. I think, however, that the Ministry is not applying the principle sufficiently widely. I know many Englishmen who have married foreigners, and many English potential wives who are out of a job. Would not a year be long enough to train an English wife to replace the existing foreign one in such cases?”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Enclosed reply to the Ministry of Labour, in defense of A. S. Neill (who declined to send it), 27 January, 1931

• “Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing what physics really asserts, since the words of everyday life are not sufficiently abstract. Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Scientific Outlook (1931)

• “The most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition. The experimental habit of mind is a difficult one for most people to maintain; indeed, the science of one generation has already become the tradition of the next...”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Scientific Outlook (1931)

• “A world without delight and without affection is a world destitute of value.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Scientific Outlook (1931)

• “All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Scientific Outlook (1931), Part I, chapter II, "Characteristics of the Scientific Method

• “I do not believe that science per se is an adequate source of happiness, nor do I think that my own scientific outlook has contributed very greatly to my own happiness, which I attribute to defecating twice a day with unfailing regularity.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to W. W. Norton (publisher), 27 January, 1931

• “I think people who are unhappy are always proud of being so, and therefore do not like to be told that there is nothing grand about their unhappiness. A man who is melancholy because lack of exercise has upset his liver always believes that it is the loss of God, or the menace of Bolshevism, or some such dignified cause that makes him sad. When you tell people that happiness is a simple matter, they get annoyed with you.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to W. W. Norton, 17 February, 1931

• “I shall keep it [the manuscript] by me until the end of May for purposes of revision, and of adding malicious foot-notes.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to W. W. Norton, 17 February, 1931

• “You will have seen that my brother died suddenly in Marseilles. I inherit from him a title, but not a penny of money, as he was bankrupt. A title is a great nuisance to me, and I am at a loss what to do, but at any rate I do not wish it employed in connection with any of my literary work. There is, so far as I know, only one method of getting rid of it, which is to be attainted of high treason, and this would involve my head being cut off on Tower Hill. This method seems to me perhaps somewhat extreme...”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to W. W. Norton, 11 March, 1931

• “I am sorry to say that at the moment I am so busy as to be convinced that life has no meaning whatever... I do not see that we can judge what would be the result of the discovery of truth, since none has hitherto been discovered.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to Will Durant, 20 June, 1931

• “A religious creed differs from a scientific theory in claiming to embody eternal and absolutely certain truth, whereas science is always tentative, expecting that modification in its present theories will sooner or later be found necessary, and aware that its method is one which is logically incapable of arriving at a complete and final demonstration.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Religion and Science (1935), Ch. I: Ground of Conflict

• “While it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Religion and Science (1935), Ch. IX: Science of Ethics.

• “New truth is often uncomfortable, especially to the holders of power; nevertheless, amid the long record of cruelty and bigotry, it is the most important achievement of our intelligent but wayward species. '”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Religion and Science (1935), Ch. X: Conclusion

• “I am against a League war in present circumstances, because the anti-League powers are strong. The analogy is not King v. Barons, but the War of the Roses. If the League were strong enough I should favour sanctions, because the effect would suffice, or the war would be short and small. The whole question is quantitative.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to Kingsley Martin shortly before the Italo-Abyssinian War (7 August 1935), quoted in Kingsley Martin, Editor: A Second Volume of Autobiography, 1931-45 (1968), p. 207

• “At the present stage in the development of the art of war, there is only way of coping with them, and that is to keep out of war. In all the densely populated countries of Western Europe, it seems almost certain that, within a few days of the outbreak of war, panic will seize the surviving inhabitants of the capitals and the industrial areas, leading to anarchy, starvation, and paralysis of all warlike effort. The only sensible course, therefore, is to prevent war if possible, and to remain neutral if war occurs.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to The New Statesman and Nation (10 August 1935), quoted in Yours Faithfully, Bertrand Russell: A Lifelong Fight for Peace, Justice, and Truth in Letters to the Editor, ed. Ray Perkins, Jr. (2002), p. 109

• “It is the duty of all who care for their country or for civilisation to point out that we cannot further any of our ideals by participation in the next war, and that we ought therefore to resist all measures based upon the assumption that we shall take part in it. In the late war it was arguable that victory, being possible, might do some good. With the modern technique of gas attack, no belligerent can hope for victory. Absolute pacifism, therefore, in every country, in which it is politically possible, is the only sane policy both for Governments and individuals.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to The New Statesman and Nation (10 August 1935), quoted in Yours Faithfully, Bertrand Russell: A Lifelong Fight for Peace, Justice, and Truth in Letters to the Editor, ed. Ray Perkins, Jr. (2002), p. 109

• “When I say that children should be told about sex, I do not mean that they should be told only the bare physiological facts; they should be told whatever they wish to know. There should be no attempt to represent adults as more virtuous than they are, or sex as occurring only in marriage. There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them, and feel justified in lying to them.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Our Sexual Ethics (1936)

• “Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The New York Herald-Tribune Magazine (6 March 1938)

• “Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Drunkenness is temporary suicide.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 than hostile.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I regard [religion] as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If, when a man writes a poem or commits a murder, the bodily movements involved in his act result solely from physical causes, it would seem absurd to put up a statue to him in the one case and to hang him in the other.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behaviour is a result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 behaviour 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. An analogous way of treating human beings is, however, considered to be contrary to the truths of our holy religion.”

  Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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