Bertrand Russell Quotes
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To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
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I regard religion as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.
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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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Political ideals must be based upon ideals for the individual life. The aim of politics should be to make the lives of individuals as good as possible.
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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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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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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 governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.
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Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable.
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When I found myself regarded as respectable, I began to wonder what sins I had committed. I must be very wicked, I thought. I began to engage in the most uncomfortable introspection.
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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.
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If, when a man writes a poem or commits a murder, the bodily movements involved in his act result solely from physical causes, it would seem absurd to put up a statue to him in the one case and to hang him in the other.
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The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.
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This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible and is something which no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate. I will not pretend to obey a government which is organising a mass massacre of mankind.
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Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
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No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.
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It is generally admitted that most grown-up people, however regrettably, will try to have a good time.
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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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All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in infering that he is an inexact man.
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Ironclads and Maxim guns must be the ultimate arbiters of metaphysical truth.
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If human nature were unchangeable, as ignorant people still suppose it to be, the situation would indeed be hopeless.
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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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To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.
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A world without delight and without affection is a world destitute of value.