Find the best quotes, maxims and aphorisms of Bertrand Russell

Biography : British philosopher, logician and mathematician.
Born: 1872 - Died: 1970
Period:
20th century
19th century
Place of birth: United Kingdom

Bertrand Russell - Quotes

Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.
Bertrand Russell - The Problems of Philosophy /

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Bertrand Russell /

Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.
Bertrand Russell /

I would never die for my beliefs, because I might be wrong.
Bertrand Russell /

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
Bertrand Russell /

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
Bertrand Russell /

happiness

Language serves not only to express thoughts, but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.
Bertrand Russell - Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits /

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
Bertrand Russell /

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

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.
Bertrand Russell /

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
Bertrand Russell /

Where the environment is stupid or prejudiced or cruel, it is a sign of merit to be out of harmony with it.
Bertrand Russell /

prejudice

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.
Bertrand Russell /

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

Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning.
Bertrand Russell /

When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: What are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts.
Bertrand Russell

If we spent half an hour every day in silent immobility, I am convinced that we should conduct all our affairs, personal, national, and international, far more sanely than we do at present.
Bertrand Russell

We are speaking on this occasion, not as members of this or that nation, continent, or creed, but as human beings, members of the species Man, whose continued existence is in doubt.
Bertrand Russell /

Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.
Bertrand Russell

We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think — in fact they do so.
Bertrand Russell

to think

When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.
Bertrand Russell

Even if everyone agrees, everyone can be wrong.
Bertrand Russell /

The separation of history from geography rests upon the separation of time from space.
Bertrand Russell /

The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
Bertrand Russell

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

The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.
Bertrand Russell

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.
Bertrand Russell

happiness

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.
Bertrand Russell

Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.
Bertrand Russell

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell - Quotes

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