Bertrand Russell Quotes
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I've got a one-dimensional mind.
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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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There are those who blame the Press, but in this I think they are mistaken. The Press is such as the public demands, and the public demands bad newspapers because it has been badly educated.
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'I don't want to! Why should I?' 'Because more people will be happier if you do than if you don't.' 'So what? I don't care about other people.' 'You should.' 'But why?' 'Because more people will be happier if you do than if you don't.'
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No rules, however wise, are a substitute for affection and tact.
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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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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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Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.
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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.
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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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We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think – in fact they do so.
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I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: 'The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.' In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.
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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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When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.
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All traditional logic habitually assumes that precise symbols are being employed. It is therefore not applicable to this terrestial life but only to an imagined celestial existence... logic takes us nearer to heaven than other studies.
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The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.
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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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Mysticism is, in essence, little more than a certain intensity and depth of feeling in regard to what is believed about the universe.
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Some part of life – perhaps the most important part – must be left to the spontaneous action of individual impulse, for where all is system there will be mental and spiritual death.
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Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.
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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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There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire – poison and antidote.
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Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.
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The typical Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment; the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as possible.