Bertrand Russell quotes
British logician, philosopher, and public intellectual. Co-author of Principia Mathematica, and later a passionate voice for peace and free thought.
37 passages across 14 themes. More on Bertrand Russell.
On action
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
“I may as well say at once that I do not distinguish between inference and deduction. What is called induction appears to me to be either disguised deduction or a mere method of making plausible guesses.”
“What does not exist must be something, or it would be meaningless to deny its existence; and hence we need the concept of being, as that which belongs even to the non-existent.”
“Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.”
“How much good it would do if one could exterminate the human race.”
“The principal source of the harm done by the State is the fact that power is its chief end.”
On wisdom
“The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.”
“Mathematics takes us still further from what is human, into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the world, but every possible world, must conform.”
“When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.”
“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.”
“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.”
On truth
“I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness.”
“Ironclads and Maxim guns must be the ultimate arbiters of metaphysical truth.”
“Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.”
“No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.”
On time
“Thee will find out in time that I have a great love of professing vile sentiments, I don't know why, unless it springs from long efforts to avoid priggery.”
“The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.”
“Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.”
“Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.”
On death
“Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.”
“Arithmetic must be discovered in just the same sense in which Columbus discovered the West Indies, and we no more create numbers than he created the Indians.”
“All's well that ends well; which is the epitaph I should put on my tombstone if I were the last man left alive.”
On mind
“What a monstrous thing that a University should teach journalism! I thought that was only done at Oxford. This respect for the filthy multitude is ruining civilisation.”
“Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.”
“Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?”
On freedom
“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.”
“I don't like the spirit of socialism – I think freedom is the basis of everything.”
“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.”
On love
“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”
“I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.”
On anger
“Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.”
“Life seems to me essentially passion, conflict, rage... It is only intellect that keeps me sane; perhaps this makes me overvalue intellect against feeling.”
On purpose
“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”
On humility
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”
On courage
“To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
On hope
“Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business.”
On suffering
“The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.”