Top 500 Bertrand Russell Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “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

102. “To be able to concentrate for a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement.”

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

110. “Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth.”

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

113. “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

114. “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

115. “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

116. “Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau.”

— Bertrand Russell

117. “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

118. “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

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

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

121. “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

122. “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

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

— Bertrand Russell

124. “Philosophy bakes no bread.”

— Bertrand Russell

125. “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

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

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

128. “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

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

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

131. “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

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

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

134. “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

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

— Bertrand Russell

136. “Choose your parents wisely.”

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

138. “The key to happiness is accepting one unpleasant reality every day.”

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

142. “Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.”

— Bertrand Russell

143. “There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.”

— Bertrand Russell

144. “Humanistic ethics is based on the principle that only humans themselves can determine the criterion for virtue and not an authority transcending us.”

— 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. “No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor, but honest.”

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

149. “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

150. “Answering questions is a major part of sex education. Two rules cover the ground. First, always give a truthful answer to a question; secondly, regard sex knowledge as exactly like any other knowledge.”

— Bertrand Russell