Quotes from Bertrand Russell

To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.

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

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid ... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

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

When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That's if you want to teach them to think.

Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.

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

We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.

No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.

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

One should as a rule 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, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.

HELL: A place where the police are German, the motorists French and the cooks English.

Love should be a tree whose roots are deep in the earth, but whose branches extend into heaven.

Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.

Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable.

Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.

We love our habits more than our income, often more than our life.

Love is a little haven of refuge from the world.

Life and hope for the world are to be found only in the deeds of love.

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

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 widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

These illustrations suggest four general maxims[...]. The first is: remember that your motives are not always as altruistic as they seem to yourself. The second is: don't over-estimate your own merits. The third is: don't expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself. And the fourth is: don't imagine that most people give enough thought to you to have any special desire to persecute you.

T]he infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

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