Quotes from Bertrand Russell

There seems scarcely any limit to what could be done in the way of producing a good world, if only men would use science wisely.

You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.

Science has made unrestricted national sovereignty incompatible with human survival. The only possibilities are now world government or death.

Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of great importance.

Frege has the merit of ... finding a third assertion by recognising the world of logic which is neither mental nor physical.

The belief that personality is mysterious and irreducible has no scientific warrant, and is accepted chiefly because it is flattering to our human self esteem.

A smile happens in a flash, but its memory can last a lifetime.

The discipline in your life should be one determined by your own desires and your own needs, not put upon you by society or authority.

Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics.

If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do.

The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.

Life is just one cup of coffee after another, and don't look for anything else.

To fear love is to fear life.

The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.

Unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is meaningless.

Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

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

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.