Bertrand Russell Quotes

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Without civic morality communities perish; without personal morality their survival has no value.

I’ve got a one-dimensional mind.

This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible, and is something that no one with a spark of humanity can tolerate. I will not pretend to obey a Government that is organizing a mass massacre of mankind.

I do not think it possible to get anywhere if we start from scepticism. We must start from a broad acceptance of whatever seems to be knowledge and is not rejected for some specific reason.

There is only one constant preoccupation: I have throughout been anxious to discover how much we can be said to know and with what degree of certainty or doubtfulness.

Can a society in which thought and technique are scientific persist for a long period, as, for example, ancient Egypt persisted, or does it necessarily contain within itself forces which must bring either decay or explosion?

Two men who differ as to the ends of life cannot hope to agree about education.

I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attach too much importance to the negative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little to the positive merit of enjoying their company.

No rules, however wise, are a substitute for affection and tact.

It is, of course, clear that a country with a large foreign population must endeavour, through its schools, to assimilate the children of immigrants… It is, however, unfortunate that a large part of this process should be effected by means of a some what blatant nationalism.

The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interest of the desire to know.

The typical Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment; the typical Chinese wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as possible.

Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.