Quotes by Russell, Bertrand

"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."

Russell, Bertrand on infinity   

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

Russell, Bertrand on intelligence and intellectuals   

"The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts- the less you know the hotter you get."

Russell, Bertrand on knowledge   

"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge."

Russell, Bertrand on knowledge   

"The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment."

Russell, Bertrand on liberals   

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

Russell, Bertrand on life
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"The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long."

Russell, Bertrand on life   

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

Russell, Bertrand on life
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"Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires."

Russell, Bertrand on anger   

"No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor, but honest."

Russell, Bertrand on animals   

"Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable, and praised when they are not praiseworthy."

Russell, Bertrand on love
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"The root of the matter the thing I mean is love, Christian love, or compassion. If you feel this, you have a motive for existence, a guide for action, a reason for courage, an imperative necessity for intellectual honesty."

Russell, Bertrand on love   

"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."

Russell, Bertrand on machinery   

"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."

Russell, Bertrand on marriage
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"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."

Russell, Bertrand on materialism   

"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly."

Russell, Bertrand on materialism   

"Mathematics, rightly viewed, poses not only truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture."

Russell, Bertrand on mathematics
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"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."

Russell, Bertrand on mathematics
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"We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one that we preach, but do not practice, and another that we practice, but seldom preach."

Russell, Bertrand on morality   

"There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less."

Russell, Bertrand on obesity   

"Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate."

Russell, Bertrand on obscenity   

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

Russell, Bertrand on opinions   

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

Russell, Bertrand on opinions
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"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."

Russell, Bertrand on passion
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"Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons."

Russell, Bertrand on patriotism   

"This idea of weapons of mass exterminations utterly horrible and is something which no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate. I will not pretend to obey a government which is organizing a mass massacre of mankind."

Russell, Bertrand on peace   

"Bad philosophers may have a certain influence; good philosophers, never."

Russell, Bertrand on philosophers and philosophy   

"Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young; the other tenth is physiological, and will occur in one way or another whatever the state of the law may be."

Russell, Bertrand on pornography   

"Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason ;knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity."

Russell, Bertrand on possibilities   

"The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics."

Russell, Bertrand on power   

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

Russell, Bertrand on progress   

"Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?"

Russell, Bertrand on propaganda   

"Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one."

Russell, Bertrand on reason   

"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."

Russell, Bertrand on religion   

"One must care about a world one will not see."

Russell, Bertrand on responsibility   

"Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted."

Russell, Bertrand on science   

"Science is what you know, philosophy what you don't know."

Russell, Bertrand on science   

"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."

Russell, Bertrand on science   

"Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a long period, as, for example, ancient Egypt persisted, or does it necessarily contain within itself forces which must bring either decay or explosion?"

Russell, Bertrand on science   

"Sin is geographical."

Russell, Bertrand on sin