Quotes from Bertrand Russell

newly powerful nations, with the exception of Spain, showed themselves as capable of great achievement as the Italians had been. From the sixteenth century onward, the history of European thought is dominated by the Reformation. The Reformation was a complex many-sided movement, and owed its success to a variety of causes. In the main, it was a revolt

Next to worry probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy.

Most people learn nothing from experience, except confirmation of their prejudices.

Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them.

There are 2 motives for reading a book; 1. That you enjoy it, 2. that can boast about it on goodreads.

He urges his young disciple and friend Pythocles to "flee from every form of culture." It was a natural consequence of his principles that he advised abstinence from public life, for in proportion as a man achieves power he increases the number of those who envy him and therefore wish to do him injury.

It is a curious fact that the more democratic a country becomes, the less respect it has for its rulers. Aristocracies and foreign conquerors may be hated but they are not despised.

The wise man will try to live unnoticed, so as to have no enemies.

Why do people read? The answer, as regards the great majority, is: 'They don't.

for if once you have become filled with hate you will not easily derive from construction the pleasure which another man would derive from it.

According to Cicero, he held that "friendship cannot be divorced from pleasure, and for that reason must be cultivated, because without it neither can we live in safety and without fear, nor even pleasantly.

Epicurus was a materialist, but not a determinist. He followed Democritus in believing that the world consists of atoms and the void; but he did not believe, as Democritus did, that the atoms are at all times completely controlled by natural laws.

It was so obvious to him that war between nation states was unnecessary, and therefore deeply stupid, that he found it hard to believe that anything could explain it other than a passion for destruction and a desire by the combatants to inflict suffering on others at no matter what price in suffering for themselves.

Since all terms that are defined are defined by means of other terms, it is clear that human knowledge must always be content to accept some terms as intelligible without definition, in order to have a starting point for its definitions...[and] since human powers are finite, the definitions known to us must always begin somewhere, with terms undefined for the moment, though perhaps not permanently. - Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy

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

Si nous n'avions pas peur de la mort , je ne crois pas que serait jamais née l'idée d'immortalité.

The world at present is full of angry self-centred groups, each incapable of viewing human life as a whole, each willing to destroy civilization rather than yield an inch

Wealth can often purchase not only the semblance of love but its reality. This is unjust and undesirable but nonetheless a fact.

to justify any such inference.

only those who slavishly worship success can think that effectiveness is admirable without regard to what is effected.

Rahasia kebahagiaan adalah, biarkan minat anda berkembang seluas mungkin. Dan biarkan reaksi anda pada orang-orang dan benda-benda yang menarik perhatian anda bersifat bersahabat, bukan memusuhi.

It must be admitted, however, that life in More's Utopia, as in most others, would be intolerably dull.

Knowledge, as opposed to fantasies of wish fulfilment, is difficult to come by.

But what the typical modern man desires to get with it is more money, with a view to ostentation, splendour, and the outshining of those who have hitherto been his equals. The social scale in America is indefinite and continually fluctuating. Consequently all the snobbish emotions become more restless than they are where the social order is fixed, and although money in itself may not suffice to make people grand, it is difficult to be grand without money.