Bertrand Arthur William Russell was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, atheist, socialist, pacifist, and social critic.
Here is my favorite Bertrand Russell Quotation:
The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.
Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people’s happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.
It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions make it impossible to earn a living.
Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love.
One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.
You can’t change the past, but you can ruin the present by worrying about the future
My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.
Boredom is … a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
This, however, is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.
The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.
War does not determine who is right – only who is left.
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.
In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery.
A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people’s.
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
On Another note, Bertrand Russell also said,
Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country.
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.
The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles.
Brief and powerless is man’s life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.
Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people’s.
Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed.
Now and then, hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.
A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.
To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.
Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.
If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.
We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.
And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence
It’s easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.
Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.
Ending with another of my favorite Bertrand Russel Quote:
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
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