Bertrand Russell Quotes

“Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people’s happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.”

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

“I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.”

“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”

“It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.”

“Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.”

“Man is not a solitary animal, and so long as social life survives, self-realization cannot be the supreme principle of ethics”

“Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.”

“Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.”

“Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.”

“No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.”

“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.”

“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.”

“Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know.”

“The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.”

“The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.”

“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”

“There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.”

“This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.”

“To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.”

“To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”