Bertrand Russell Quotes
-
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.
-
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
-
I've got a one-dimensional mind.
-
The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.
-
I believe that the abolition of private ownership of land and capital is a necessary step toward any world in which the nations are to live at peace with one another.
-
One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.
-
It is sometimes maintained that racial mixture is biologically undesirable. There is no evidence whatever for this view. Nor is there, apparently, any reason to think that Negroes are congenitally less intelligent than white people, but as to that it will be difficult to judge until they have equal scope and equally good social conditions.
-
I observe that a very large portion of the human race does not believe in God and suffers no visible punishment in consequence. And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence.
-
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.
-
One must look into hell before one has any right to speak of heaven.
-
I am sure that university life would be better, both intellectually and morally, if most university students had temporary childless marriages. This would afford a solution to the sexual urge neither restless nor surreptitious, neither mercenary nor casual, and of such a nature that it need not take up time which ought to be given to work.
-
Mathematics takes us still further from what is human, into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the world, but every possible world, must conform.
-
No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is; no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.
-
Choose your parents wisely.
-
It is, of course, clear that a country with a large foreign population must endeavour, through its schools, to assimilate the children of immigrants. It is, however, unfortunate that a large part of this process should be effected by means of a somewhat blatant nationalism.
-
Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.
-
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
-
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.
-
What a monstrous thing that a University should teach journalism! I thought that was only done at Oxford. This respect for the filthy multitude is ruining civilisation.
-
Mysticism is, in essence, little more than a certain intensity and depth of feeling in regard to what is believed about the universe.
-
He asked my religion and I replied 'agnostic'. He asked how to spell it, and remarked with a sigh: 'Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God. This remark kept me cheerful for about a week.
-
Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
-
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 fearful passionless force of non-human things...
-
There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire – poison and antidote.