Bertrand Russell Quotes

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

Themselves, Criticism, Fury

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
Bertrand Russell

Opinion, Fact, Whatever

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

Happiness, Friendly, Rather

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
Bertrand Russell

Happiness, Fact, Secret

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

Life, Great, Happy

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.
Bertrand Russell

Religion, Enemy, Christian

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.
Bertrand Russell

Religion, Science, Away

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, Wisdom, Beginning

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
Bertrand Russell

Science, Philosophy

A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.
Bertrand Russell

Life, Short, Whatever

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

Education, Freedom, Thought

Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.
Bertrand Russell

Happiness, Human, Hatred

I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.
Bertrand Russell

Nature, Happiness, Time

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

War, Country, Talk

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 a paradise in a few years.
Bertrand Russell

Happiness, Today, Others

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
Bertrand Russell

Living, Else, Freely

A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
Bertrand Russell

Fact, Judgment, Based

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.
Bertrand Russell

A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.
Bertrand Russell

Work, Wish, Sense

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

Work, Important, Belief

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 poetry.
Bertrand Russell

Poetry, True, Sense

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
Bertrand Russell

Fear, Toward, Instinct

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
Bertrand Russell

Life, Nothing, Rather

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
Bertrand Russell

Die, Fact, Sooner

No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
Bertrand Russell

Secret, Virtues, Gossips

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Biography

Nationality: British

Type: Philosopher

Born: May 18, 1872

Died: February 2, 1970

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Cite this Page: Citation

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