Top 500 Bertrand Russell Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interest of the desire to know.”

— Bertrand Russell

102. “Cynicism such as one finds very frequently among the most highly educated young men and women of the West, results from the combination of comfort and powerlessness.”

— Bertrand Russell

103. “The resistance to a new idea increases by the square of its importance.”

— Bertrand Russell

104. “The time has come, or is about to come, when only large-scale civil disobedience, which should be nonviolent, can save the populations from the universal death which their governments are preparing for them.”

— Bertrand Russell

105. “Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.”

— Bertrand Russell

106. “The experience of overcoming fear is extraordinarily delightful.”

— Bertrand Russell

107. “To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.”

— Bertrand Russell

108. “I think it would be just to say the most essential characteristic of mind is memory, using this word in its broadest sense to include every influence of past experience on present reactions.”

— Bertrand Russell

109. “What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.”

— Bertrand Russell

110. “As soon as we abandon our reason and are content to rely on authority, there is no end to our troubles.”

— Bertrand Russell

111. “Some people would rather die than think.”

— Bertrand Russell

112. “Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts.”

— Bertrand Russell

113. “An individual human existence should be like a river.”

— Bertrand Russell

114. “The very best proof that something can be done is that someone has already done it.”

— Bertrand Russell

115. “Stupidity and unconscious bias often work more damage than venality.”

— Bertrand Russell

116. “The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.”

— Bertrand Russell

117. “Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing what physics really asserts, since the words of everyday life are not sufficiently abstract. Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.”

— Bertrand Russell

118. “Almost all education has a political motive.”

— Bertrand Russell

119. “Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau.”

— Bertrand Russell

120. “A good man will never suspect his friends of shady actions: this is part of his goodness. A good man will never be suspected by the public of using his goodness to screen villains: this is part of his utility.”

— Bertrand Russell

121. “Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.”

— Bertrand Russell

122. “Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.”

— Bertrand Russell

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123. “Philosophy bakes no bread.”

— Bertrand Russell

124. “Choose your parents wisely.”

— Bertrand Russell

125. “Education is not to be viewed as something like filling a vessel with water but, rather, assisting a flower to grow in its own way.”

— Bertrand Russell

126. “Life is just one cup of coffee after another, and don’t look for anything else.”

— Bertrand Russell

127. “Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.”

— Bertrand Russell

128. “The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.”

— Bertrand Russell

129. “My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.”

— Bertrand Russell

130. “A man of Seville is shaved by the Barber of Seville if and only if the man does not shave himself. Does the barber shave himself?”

— Bertrand Russell

131. “There is as much difference between a collection of mentally free citizens and a community molded by modern methods of propaganda as there is between a heap of raw materials and a battleship.”

— Bertrand Russell

132. “Cruel men believe in a cruel god and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly god, and they would be kindly in any case.”

— Bertrand Russell

133. “The road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.”

— Bertrand Russell

134. “It’s easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.”

— Bertrand Russell

135. “Teachers are more than any other group the guardians of civilization.”

— Bertrand Russell

136. “Democracy has at least one merit, namely that a Member of Parliament cannot be stupider than his constituents, for the more stupid he is, the more stupid they were to elect him.”

— Bertrand Russell

137. “Either man will abolish war, or war will abolish man.”

— Bertrand Russell

138. “Facts have to be discovered by observation, not by reasoning.”

— Bertrand Russell

139. “Obviousness is always the enemy of correctness.”

— Bertrand Russell

140. “The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.”

— Bertrand Russell

141. “Mathematics is, I believe, the chief source of the belief in eternal and exact truth, as well as a sensible intelligible world.”

— Bertrand Russell

142. “We need a science to save us from science.”

— Bertrand Russell

143. “People are zealous for a cause when they are not quite positive that it is true.”

— Bertrand Russell

144. “The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.”

— Bertrand Russell

145. “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

146. “Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.”

— Bertrand Russell

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147. “Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.”

— Bertrand Russell

148. “If a philosophy is to bring happiness it should be inspired by kindly feelings. Marx pretended that he wanted the happiness of the proletariat; what he really wanted was the unhappiness of the bourgeois.”

— Bertrand Russell

149. “Be isolated, be ignored, be attacked, be in doubt, be frightened, but do not be silenced.”

— Bertrand Russell

150. “The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty.”

— Bertrand Russell