Quotes from Bertrand Russell

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

The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.

God and Satan alike are essentially human figures, the one a projection of ourselves, the other of our enemies.

When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God.

The difficulty is old, but none the less real. An omnipotent being who created a world containing evil not due to sin must Himself be at least partially evil.

There are still many people in America who regard depressions as acts of God. I think Keynes proved that the responsibility for these occurrences does not rest with Providence.

Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God.

Great God in Boots! – the ontological argument is sound!

For my part, I prefer the ontological argument, the cosmological argument and the rest of the old stock-in-trade, to the sentimental illogicality that has sprung from Rousseau.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.

If the Church is not now as bad as the Soviet Government, that is due to the influence of those who attacked the Church

Every great idea starts out as a blasphemy.

Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.

Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that is happiness.

The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of happiness he has and the less he is at the mercy of fate, since if he loses one thing he can fall back upon another.

Happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly.

The key to happiness is accepting one unpleasant reality every day.

Drunkeness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness.

Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.

What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy.

Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety.

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.

Any pleasure that does no harm to other people is to be valued.