Bertrand Russell Quotes
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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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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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If the Communists conquered the world, it would be very unpleasant for a while, but not forever. But if the human race is wiped out, that is the end.
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I am looking forward very much to getting back to Cambridge, and being able to say what I think and not to mean what I say: two things which at home are impossible. Cambridge is one of the few places where one can talk unlimited nonsense and generalities without anyone pulling one up or confronting one with them when one says just the opposite the next day.
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Written words differ from spoken words in being material structures. A spoken word is a process in the physical world, having an essential time-order; a written word is a series of pieces of matter, having an essential space-order.
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Yes, if you happen to be interested in philosophy and good at it, but not otherwise – but so does bricklaying. Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.
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Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
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Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for co-operation with oneself.
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A life devoted to science is therefore a happy life, and its happiness is derived from the very best sources that are open to dwellers on this troubled and passionate planet.
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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.
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There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.
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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.
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A logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible, since these serve much the same purpose as is served by experiments in physical science.
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A world full of happiness is not beyond human power to create; the obstacles imposed by inanimate nature are not insuperable. The real obstacles lie in the heart of man, and the cure for these is a firm hope, informed and fortified by thought.
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I am sorry to say that at the moment I am so busy as to be convinced that life has no meaning whatever... I do not see that we can judge what would be the result of the discovery of truth, since none has hitherto been discovered.
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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.
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If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.
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Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.
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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.
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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.
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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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Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?
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Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
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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.