Quotes from Bertrand Russell

Un mundo bueno necesita conocimientos, bondad y valor; no necesita el pesaroso anhelo del pasado, ni el aherrojamiento de la inteligencia libre mediante las palabras proferidas hace mucho por hombres ignorantes.

There is reason to think, that if men were better instructed themselves, they would be less imposing on others.

The technique of acquiring dictatorship over what has been a democracy has been familiar since Greek times, and always involves the same mixture of bribery, propaganda and violence.

I do not like mystical language, and yet I hardly know how to express what I mean without employing phrases that sound poetic rather than scientific.

Only the guardians, in Plato's language, are to think; the rest are to obey, or to follow leaders like a herd of sheep. This doctrine, often unconsciously, has survived the introduction of political democracy, and has radically vitiated all national systems of education.

We cannot admire a social system which allows no scope for individual achievement, and we cannot approve one in which excessive individualism makes the social system unstable.

Leibniz used to discourse to Queen Sophia Charlotte of Prussia concerning the infinitely little, and how she would reply that on that subject she needed no instruction—the behaviour of courtiers had made her thoroughly familiar with it.

Plato's Socrates had argued that to inflict injustice was a greater evil to the perpetrator than to suffer it.

One comes across white men occasionally who suffer under the delusion that China is not a civilized country. Such men have forgotten what constitutes civilization.

But in fact, while some aspects of history can be made more or less scientific, and while it is important to do this wherever it is possible, the material is too complex to be reduced to scientific laws at present, and probably for centuries to come.

The pursuit of social success, in the form of prestige or power or both, is the most important obstacle to happiness in a competitive society.

The mind which has become accustomed to the freedom and impartiality of philosophic contemplation will preserve something of the same freedom and impartiality in the world of action and emotion.

This is one of those views which are so absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them.

nor do I think that my scientific outlook has contributed very greatly to my happiness, which I attribute to defecating twice a day with unfailing regularity.

The belief in the immense value of the lady is a psychological effect of the difficulty of obtaining her, and I think it may be laid down that when a man has no difficulty in obtaining a woman, his feeling towards her does not take the form of romantic love.

Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false.

It is amazing how much both happiness and efficiency can be increased by the cultivation of an orderly mind, which thinks about a matter adequately at the right time rather than inadequately at all times.

He was recommended to the "Caliph" Abu Yaqub Yusuf as a man capable of making an analysis of the works of Aristotle. (It seems, however, that he did not know Greek.) This ruler took him into favour; in 1184 he made him his physician, but unfortunately the patient died two years later.

In national politics, where you are one of some twenty million voters, your influence is infinitesimal unless you are exceptional or occupy an exceptional position. You have, it is true, a twenty-millionth share in the government of others, but only a twenty-millionth share in the government of yourself. You are therefore much more conscious of being governed than of governing.

Men would be chosen for jobs on account of fitness to do the work, not because they flattered the irrational dogmas of those in power.

to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy.

In this lies Man's true freedom: in determination to worship only the God created by our own love of the good.

untroubled by the thought of death because he fears himself not really separate from those who will come after him. It is in such profound instinctive union with the stream of life the greatest joy is to be found.

Not all of the Greeks, but a large proportion of them, were passionate, unhappy, at war with themselves, driven along one road by the intellect and along another by the passions, with the imagination to conceive heaven and the wilful self-assertion that creates hell.