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Bertrand Russell

78 quotes

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and social critic. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 for his varied and significant writing championing humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought. Russell is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy.

“Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.”

— Bertrand Russell

Men

All Quotes by Bertrand Russell

“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

Marriage

“Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.”

— Bertrand Russell

Fear

“If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.”

— Bertrand Russell

Happiness

“Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.”

— Bertrand Russell

War

“Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.”

— Bertrand Russell

Good

“There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.”

— Bertrand Russell

Respect

“The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.”

— Bertrand Russell

Good

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.”

— Bertrand Russell

Work

“Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.”

— Bertrand Russell

Respect

“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”

— Bertrand Russell

Fear

“I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.”

— Bertrand Russell

Religion

“The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”

— Bertrand Russell

Funny

“The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.”

— Bertrand Russell

Dad

“If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.”

— Bertrand Russell

Happiness

“I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.”

— Bertrand Russell

Funny

“The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.”

— Bertrand Russell

Knowledge

“Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.”

— Bertrand Russell

Time

“Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.”

— Bertrand Russell

Intelligence

“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.”

— Bertrand Russell

Death

“I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.”

— Bertrand Russell

Happiness