Bertrand Russell Quotes

Bertrand Russell (150)

Birth:	18th May, 1872
Death:	2nd February, 1970
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Historian, Mathematician, Philosopher

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Births

• 1926 - Miles Davis
• 1946 - Mick Ronson
• 1912 - Janos Kadar
• 1939 - Brent Musburger
• 1941 - Aldrich Ames

Deaths

• 2003 - Kathleen Winsor
• 1951 - Lincoln Ellsworth
• 2008 - Sydney Pollack
• 2005 - Eddie Albert
• 1831 - Georg Hermes

• What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Belief, Knowledge

  Tags in Opposite, Discovery

• There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Respect

  Tags in Obesity, Mere

• The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

  Bertrand Russell

  Tags in Controversy

• The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.

  Bertrand Russell

  Tags in Nevertheless, Certainty, Intellectual

• Sin is geographical.

  Bertrand Russell

  Tags in Sin, Geographical

• 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.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Religion

  Tags in Insight, Persecution, Destruction

• Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Fear, Religion

  Tags in Guidelines, Adopt

• Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.

  Bertrand Russell

  Tags in Continuity, Unity

• One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Work

• 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.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Fear

  Tags in Neither

• Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.

  Bertrand Russell

  Tags in Favors, Machines, Slavery

• Liberty is the right to do what I like; license, the right to do what you like.

  Bertrand Russell

  Tags in License, Liberty

• I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Belief

  Tags in Outrage

• 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.

  Bertrand Russell

  Tags in Mutation, Materialism, Yield, Shall

• Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Fear, Wisdom

  Tags in Conquer, Cruelty, Superstition

• Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

  Bertrand Russell

  Tags in Justification, Philosophical

• Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

  Bertrand Russell

  Tags in Dogmatism, Absolute, Dissipate, Certainty, Skepticism

• A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

  Bertrand Russell

  Tags in Stream, Tyrant, Eternal

• To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Wisdom

• I’ve made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite.

  Bertrand Russell

  Topics in Nature