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Bertrand Russell Quotes about Life

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The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Bertrand Russell
Inspirational, Life, Happiness

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.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Strong, Fear
Autobiography prologue (1967)

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

Bertrand Russell
Funny, Life, Competition
Bertrand Russell (2002). “The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Public Years, 1914-1970”, p.215, Psychology Press

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

Bertrand Russell
Life, Badass, Philosophy
Bertrand Russell (1995). “My Philosophical Development”, p.204, Psychology Press

I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Happiness, Gratitude

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

Bertrand Russell
Love, Life, Relationship
Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.56, Simon and Schuster

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

Bertrand Russell
Life, Money, Freedom
"Principles of Social Reconstruction". Book by Bertrand Russell, 1917.

What hunger is in relation to food, zest is in relation to life.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Food, Zest
Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.91, Lulu Press, Inc

We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Spring, Creative
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Authority and the Individual”, p.38, Routledge

Life and hope for the world are to be found only in the deeds of love.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Hope, World
Bertrand Russell (2006). “Political Ideals”, p.90, Cosimo, Inc.

Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Happiness, Procrastination
Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.40, Lulu Press, Inc

Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.

Bertrand Russell
Love, Life, Giving
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Marriage and Morals”, p.80, Routledge

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.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Pain, Night
Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.115, Simon and Schuster

What else is there to make life tolerable? We stand on the shore of an ocean, crying to the night and to emptiness. Sometimes a voice of one drowning, and in a moment the silence returns. The world seems to me quite dreadful, the unhappiness of many people is very great, and I often wonder how they all endure it. It is usually the central thing around which their lives are built, and I suppose if they did not live most of their lives in the things of the moment, they would not be able to go on.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Ocean, Night

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Bertrand Russell
Love, Inspirational, Life
Marriage and Morals (1929) ch. 19

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.

Bertrand Russell
Love, Life, Wedding
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Marriage and Morals”, p.79, Routledge

At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love. I had not imagined there was anything so delicious in the world. From that moment until I was thirty-eight, mathematics was my chief interest and my chief source of happiness.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Brother, First Love
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Autobiography”, p.25, 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

Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing what physics really asserts, since the words of everyday life are not sufficiently abstract. Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Mean, Math
Bertrand Russell (1992). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 1903-1959”, p.626, Psychology Press

All the conditions of happiness are realized in the life of the man of science.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Science, Men
Bertrand Russell (2013). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.55, W. W. Norton & Company

Love as a relation between men and women was ruined by the desire to make sure of the legitimacy of children.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Children, Men
Marriage and Morals

I believe myself that romantic love is the source of the most intense delights that life has to offer. In the relation of a man and woman who love each other with passion and imagination and tenderness, there is something of inestimable value, to be ignorant of which is a great misfortune to any human being.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Believe, Passion
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Marriage and Morals”, p.46, Routledge

Real life is, to most men, a long second best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Real, Men
Bertrand Russell (2016). “Mysticism and Logic”, p.94, Bertrand Russell

Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Death, Fall
Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.115, Simon and Schuster

Those who in principle oppose birth control are either incapable of arithmetic or else in favour of war, pestilence and famine as permanent features of human life.

Bertrand Russell
Life, War, Pestilence
Bertrand Russell (1971). “Ladislas Reymont: Romain Rolland ; Bertrand Russell”

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