Famous Quotes by Bertrand Russell (111 Quotations)

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 – [Fear]

Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.

Bertrand Russell – [Happiness]

Folly is perennial, yet the human race has survived.

Bertrand Russell – [Fools and Foolishness]

For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favorable and unfavorable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern; all alike, I should say, result from paucity of experience.

Bertrand Russell – [Women]

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

Bertrand Russell – [Materialism]

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

Bertrand Russell – [Freedom]

Happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly.

Bertrand Russell – [Happiness]

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.

Bertrand Russell – [Hatred]

I am paid by the word, so I always write the shortest words possible.

Bertrand Russell – [Writers and Writing]

I had supposed until that time that it was quite common for parents to love their children, but the war persuaded me that it is a rare exception. I had supposed that most people liked money better than almost anything else, but I discovered that they liked destruction even better. I had supposed that intellectuals frequently loved truth, but I found here again that not ten per cent of them prefer truth to popularity.

Bertrand Russell – [War]

If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

Bertrand Russell – [Circumstance]

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

Bertrand Russell – [Infinity]

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

Bertrand Russell – [Fools and Foolishness]

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 – [Happiness]

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 Russell – [Doubt]

In America everybody is of opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors.

Bertrand Russell – [Equality]

In science men have discovered an activity of the very highest value in which they are no longer, as in art, dependent for progress upon the appearance of continually greater genius, for in science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it.

Bertrand Russell – [Science and Scientists]

In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word ''experience'' have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.

Bertrand Russell – [Experience]

Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.

Bertrand Russell – [Anger]

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

Bertrand Russell – [Opinions]