Bertrand Russell Quotes
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It's not the experience that happens to you: it's what you do with the experience that happens to you.
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Wherever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness, it is a sign of emotional failure: a larger heart, and a greater self-restraint, would put a calm autumnal sadness in the place of the instinctive outcry of pain.
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I cannot escape from the conclusion that the great ages of progress have depended upon a small number of individuals of transcendent ability.
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Competition for power is of two sorts: between organizations, and between individuals for leadership within an organization.
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I cannot believe – and I say this with all the emphasis of which I am capable – that there can ever be any good excuse for refusing to face the evidence in favour of something unwelcome. It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.
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I should say that the universe is just there, and that is all.
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Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
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What does not exist must be something, or it would be meaningless to deny its existence; and hence we need the concept of being, as that which belongs even to the non-existent.
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To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.
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In the welter of conflicting fanaticisms, one of the few unifying forces is scientific truthfulness, by which I mean the habit of basing our beliefs upon observations and inferences as impersonal, and as much divested of local and temperamental bias, as is possible for human beings.
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The degree of one's emotion varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts – the less you know the hotter you get.
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Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.
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I've got a one-dimensional mind.
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First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.
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In a logically perfect language, there will be one word and no more for every simple object, and everything that is not simple will be expressed by a combination of words, by a combination derived, of course, from the words for the simple things that enter in, one word for each simple component.
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No rules, however wise, are a substitute for affection and tact.
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The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one – particularly if he plays golf, which he usually does.
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The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.
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There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
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The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.
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The state is primarily an organization for killing foreigners.
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A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.
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Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.
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I do not believe that science per se is an adequate source of happiness, nor do I think that my own scientific outlook has contributed very greatly to my own happiness, which I attribute to defecating twice a day with unfailing regularity.