Bertrand Russell Quotes
Bertrand Russell Quotes. Below is a collection of famous Bertrand Russell quotes. Here you can find the most popular and greatest quotes by Bertrand Russell. Share these quotations with your friends and family.
The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.
By Bertrand Russell
The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and start From the slightest pain or equal foe.
By Bertrand Russell
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence
By Bertrand Russell
Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.
By Bertrand Russell
Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction.
By Bertrand Russell
Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity.
By Bertrand Russell
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.
By Bertrand Russell
Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position.
By Bertrand Russell
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.
By Bertrand Russell
Order, unity and continuity are human inventions just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.
By Bertrand Russell
Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.
By Bertrand Russell
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
By Bertrand Russell
One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.
By Bertrand Russell
One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.
By Bertrand Russell
Nothing of importance is ever achieved without discipline. I feel myself sometimes not wholly in sympathy with some modern educational theorists, because I think that they underestimate the part that discipline plays. But the discipline you have in your life should be one determined by your own desires and your own needs, not put upon you by society or authority.
By Bertrand Russell
Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
By Bertrand Russell
No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?
By Bertrand Russell
Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.
By Bertrand Russell
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear
By Bertrand Russell