Bertrand Russell Quotes

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing education can do.

The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

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.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress – though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.

Bertrand Russell Quotes part 2

A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations.

The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Change is one thing, progress is another. Change is scientific, progress is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.

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.

The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.

Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.

Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.

Where there is no science, ignorance has freedom of movement.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

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.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

One of the signs of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it to be true.

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.

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.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocks ure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

The reason why the universe is eternal is that it does not live for itself; it gives life to others as it transforms.

What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.

There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy.

Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it.

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

The mental life of savages had long been familiar and attractive to me because of its independence of daily endeavor and its freedom from the uninteresting side of civilization.

To understand a name, one must be acquainted with the particular use of the name in question.

The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.

A wise man is one who knows how little he knows.

It is not by prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.

The function of song and laughter in religion is to bring about the trance.

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.

The most important thing in life is to think rightly, to act rightly, and to feel rightly.

The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.

The thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have.

The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the original false conception come ‘true’. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error.