Bertrand Russell Quotes

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

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

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?

The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

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