Quotes from Bertrand Russell

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

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.

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

The best practical advice I can give to the present generation is to practice the virtue which the Christians call love.

Love cannot exists as a duty; to tell a child that it ought to love its parents and its brother and sisters is utterly useless, if not worse.

Love is a slippery eel that bites like hell

If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.

Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction.

dont let the old break you; let the love make you

Human life, its growth, its hopes, fears, loves, et cetera, are the result of accidents

The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what we want most for what we want in the moment

The best practical advice I can give to the present generation is to practice the virtue which the Christians call love.

Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love

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

In order to be happy we require all kinds of supports to our self-esteem. We are human beings, therefore human beings are the purpose of god's creation

There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action

Civilized life has altogether grown too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide a harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting

The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as a training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely utilitarian point of view as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom.

With the introduction of agriculture mankind entered upon a long period of meanness, misery, and madness, from which they are only now being freed by the beneficent operation of the machine.

No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate?

One should respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

By religion I mean a set of beliefs held as dogmas, dominating the conduct of life, going beyond or contrary to evidence, and inculcated by methods which are emotional or authoritarian, not intellectual

Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction.