Top 500 Bertrand Russell Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.”

— Bertrand Russell

202. “I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose.”

— Bertrand Russell

203. “The essence of the liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held; instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.”

— Bertrand Russell

204. “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. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.”

— Bertrand Russell

205. “Broadly speaking, we are in the middle of a race between human skill as a means and human folly as an end.”

— Bertrand Russell

206. “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

207. “To avoid the various foolish opinions to which mankind are prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not from all error, but from silly error.”

— Bertrand Russell

208. “What is matter? Never mind.”

— Bertrand Russell

209. “You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.”

— Bertrand Russell

210. “There is darkness without and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, nor vastness anywhere; only triviality for a moment and then nothing.”

— Bertrand Russell

211. “El tiempo que disfrutas perder no es tiempo perdido.”

— Bertrand Russell

212. “Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?”

— Bertrand Russell

213. “Aristotle and Plato considered Greeks so innately superior to barbarians that slavery is justified so long as the master is Greek and the slave barbarian.”

— Bertrand Russell

214. “I do not believe that I am now dreaming, but I cannot prove that I am not. I am, however, quite certain that I am having certain experiences, whether they be those of a dream or those of waking life.”

— Bertrand Russell

215. “I am firm; YOU are obstinate; HE is a pig-headed fool.”

— Bertrand Russell

216. “Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is based on the idea of approximation. If a man tells you he knows a thing exactly, then you can be safe in inferring that you are speaking to an inexact man.”

— Bertrand Russell

217. “I have come to realize that an early symptom of approaching mental illness is the belief that one’s work is terribly important. If you consider your work very important you should take a day off.”

— Bertrand Russell

218. “Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.”

— Bertrand Russell

219. “Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness is dead.”

— Bertrand Russell

220. “There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere.”

— Bertrand Russell

221. “My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.”

— Bertrand Russell

222. “All’s well that ends well; which is the epitaph I should put on my tombstone if I were the last man left alive.”

— Bertrand Russell

223. “Animal rights, taken to their logical conclusion, mean votes for oysters.”

— Bertrand Russell

224. “Brief and powerless is man’s life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.”

— Bertrand Russell

225. “The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress. It’s coexistence or no existence.”

— Bertrand Russell

226. “Unhappy business men, I am convinced, would increase their happiness more by walking six miles every day than by any conceivable change of philosophy.”

— Bertrand Russell

227. “It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.”

— Bertrand Russell

228. “A man without a bias cannot write interesting history – if indeed such a man exists.”

— Bertrand Russell

229. “We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think in fact they do so.”

— Bertrand Russell

230. “The happy life is to an extraordinary extent the same as the good life.”

— Bertrand Russell

231. “I dislike Communism because it is undemocratic, and capitalism because it favors exploitation.”

— Bertrand Russell

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

— Bertrand Russell

233. “Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought of duty. To say that it is your duty to love so-and-so is the surest way to cause you to hate him of her.”

— Bertrand Russell

234. “The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.”

— Bertrand Russell

235. “How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?”

— Bertrand Russell

236. “If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.”

— Bertrand Russell

237. “Many a marriage hardly differs from prostitution, except being harder to escape from.”

— Bertrand Russell

238. “I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy.”

— Bertrand Russell

239. “My first advice on how not to grow old would be to choose you ancestors carefully.”

— Bertrand Russell

240. “In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.”

— Bertrand Russell

241. “When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God.”

— Bertrand Russell

242. “I was told that The Chinese said they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic for an atheist.”

— Bertrand Russell

243. “HELL: A place where the police are German, the motorists French and the cooks English.”

— Bertrand Russell

244. “Great God in Boots! – the ontological argument is sound!”

— Bertrand Russell

245. “What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.”

— Bertrand Russell

246. “The above proposition is occasionally useful.”

— Bertrand Russell

247. “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.”

— Bertrand Russell

248. “I do not believe that science per se is an adequate source of happiness, nor do I think that my own scientific outlook has contributed very greatly to my own happiness, which I attribute to defecating twice a day with unfailing regularity.”

— Bertrand Russell

249. “Among human beings, the subjection of women is much more complete at a certain level of civilization than it is among savages. And the subjection is always reinforced by morality.”

— Bertrand Russell

250. “Dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the source of opinion; it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to unbelievers; it asks of its disciples that they should inhibit natural kindliness in favor of systematic hatred.”

— Bertrand Russell