Authors:

Bertrand Russell Quotes - Page 23

All Quotes Acceptance Achievement Adventure Affection Age Alcohol Anger Anxiety Art Atheism Atheist Attitude Authority Belief Birth Blasphemy Boredom Change Character Charity Children Choices Christ Christianity Church Common Sense Communism Community Compassion Competition Confidence Conflict Country Courage Creativity Curiosity Death Democracy Desire Devil Devotion Discipline Diversity Divorce Dogma Doubt Drinking Duty Earth Economics Education Effort Ego Energy Environment Envy Ethics Evidence Evil Excellence Exercise Failing Faith Fate Fear Feelings Fighting Finding Yourself Free Will Freedom Funny Genius Giving God Gossip Gratitude Greatness Greek Growth Happiness Happy Hate Hatred Heart Heaven Hell History Holiday Home Honesty Hope Human Nature Humanity Humility Husband Idealism Ignorance Imagination Impulse Injustice Innovation Insanity Inspiration Inspirational Integrity Intelligence Intuition Islam Joy Justice Kindness Knowledge Language Laughter Learning Liberty Life Literature Logic Loneliness Love Love Life Lying Madness Magic Mankind Marriage Math Mathematics Memories Morality Motivational Nature Observation Overcoming Pain Passion Past Peace Perfection Philosophy Plato Pleasure Politics Poverty Power Praise Prejudice Preparation Pride Progress Prosperity Psychology Punctuality Purpose Quality Reading Reality Regret Religion Respect Responsibility Satan School Science Science And Religion Security Simplicity Sin Skepticism Solitude Son Soul Spirituality Spring Struggle Study Stupidity Success Suffering Survival Teaching Terror Time Tolerance Tradition Travel Truth Understanding Victory Virtue Vision War Water Wife Wisdom Work Worry Worship Writing Youth
The puritanism of Christianity has played havoc with the moderation that an enlightened and tolerant critical spirit would have produced. I've noticed that in whatever country, county, town, or other region there is a

The puritanism of Christianity has played havoc with the moderation that an enlightened and tolerant critical spirit would have produced. I've noticed that in whatever country, county, town, or other region there is a regulation enjoining temperance, the population seems to be entirely composed of teetotallers and drunkards. There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire - poison and antidote.

Bertrand Russell
Country, Next, Towns

Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.

Bertrand Russell
Thinking, Religion, Atheism
Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.553, Routledge

Upon hearing via Littlewood an exposition on the theory of relativity: To think I have spent my life on absolute muck.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Thinking, Hearing

Power is sweet; it is a drug, the desire for which increases with a habit.

Bertrand Russell
Sweet, War, Political

I mean by intellectual integrity the habit of deciding vexed questions in accordance with the evidence, or of leaving them undecided where the evidence is inconclusive. This virtue, though it is underestimated by almost all adherents of any system of dogma, is to my mind of the very greatest social importance and far more likely to benefit the world than Christianity or any other system of organized beliefs.

Bertrand Russell
Integrity, Mean, Leaving
Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”, p.598, Psychology Press

The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.

Bertrand Russell
Peace, Real, Lying
Bertrand Russell, Dora Russell (1959). “The Prospects of Industrial Civilization”, p.216, Psychology Press

Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.

Bertrand Russell
Spiritual, War, Evil
Charles Chatfield, Bertrand Russell, Ralph Barton Perry (1972). “ETHICS OF WAR”, Dissertations-G

Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is based on the idea of approximation. If a man tells you he knows a thing exactly, then you can be safe in inferring that you are speaking to an inexact man.

Bertrand Russell
Math, Men, Ideas

a generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow process of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers as though they were cut flowers in a vase.

Bertrand Russell
Flower, Cutting, Men
Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.36, Lulu Press, Inc

Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance.

Bertrand Russell
Wisdom, Science, Giving
Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.66, 谷月社

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

Bertrand Russell
Children, Dad, Father
Sceptical Essays (1928) "Freedom versus Authority in Education"

We are condemned to kill time, thus we die bit by bit. - Octavio Paz The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Bertrand Russell
Wasting Time, Wasted Time, Enjoy

Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.

Bertrand Russell
Math, Men, Wife
Impact of Science on Society ch. 1 (1952)

It seems to us unwise to have insisted on teaching geometry to the younger Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, in order to make him a good king, but from Plato's point of view it was essential. He was sufficiently Pythagorean to think that without mathematics no true wisdom is possible.

Bertrand Russell
Kings, Plato, Teaching
Bertrand Russell (2013). “History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition”, p.95, Routledge

It is no credit to the orthodox that they do not now believe all the absurdities that were believed 150 years ago. The gradual emasculation of the Christian doctrine has been effected in spite of the most vigorous resistance, and solely as the result of the onslaughts of freethinkers.

Bertrand Russell
Christian, Believe, Years
Bertrand Russell (2016). “Why I Am Not a Christian”, p.60, Lulu Press, Inc

As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.

Bertrand Russell
Atheist, Men, Thinking
Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.91, Psychology Press

Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; no fire, no heroism, no intensity of though and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave.

Bertrand Russell
Men, Fire, Feelings
Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.107, Simon and Schuster

You could take up the line that some of the gnostics took up - a line which I often thought was a very plausible one - that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.

Bertrand Russell
Devil, Matter, Facts
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.119, Routledge

[Man] ... his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labour of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.

Bertrand Russell
Inspiration, Science, Men
Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays”, p.46, Booklassic

...I am afraid that education is conceived more in terms of indoctrination by most school officials than in terms of enlightenment. My own belief is that education must be subversive if it is to be meaningful. By this I mean that it must challenge all the things we take for granted, examine all accepted assumptions, tamper with every sacred cow, and instill a desire to question and doubt. Without this the mere instruction to memorise data is empty. The attempt to enforce conventional mediocrity on the young is criminal.

Bertrand Russell
Meaningful, School, Data

Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.

Bertrand Russell
Learning, Language, Programming
Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.106, Routledge

The human heart as modern civilization has made it is more prone to hatred than to friendship. And it is prone to hatred because it is dissatisfied.

Bertrand Russell
Heart, Civilization, Hatred
Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.53, Lulu Press, Inc

Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts.

Bertrand Russell
Christian, Hands, Two
Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

(on A History of Western Philosophy) I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if, indeed, such man exists.

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Writing, Men
Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.465, Routledge

I must, before I die, find some way to say the essential thing that is in me, that I have never said yet -- a thing that is not love or hate or pity or scorn, but the very breath of life, fierce and coming from far away, bringing into human life the vastness and the fearful passionless force of non-human things.

Bertrand Russell
Hate, Essentials, Vastness
Bertrand Russell (1995). “My Philosophical Development”, p.193, Psychology Press

You May Also Like: