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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.

“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.”

— Bertrand Russell

Great

All Quotes by Bertrand Russell

“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

“Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.”

— Bertrand Russell

Men

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

— Bertrand Russell

Work

“In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.”

— Bertrand Russell

Experience

“The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.”

— Bertrand Russell

Great

“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

Great

“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

“A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.”

— Bertrand Russell

Work

“Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.”

— Bertrand Russell

Change

“Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.”

— Bertrand Russell

Happiness

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

— Bertrand Russell

War

“Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.”

— Bertrand Russell

Patriotism

“To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.”

— Bertrand Russell

Age

“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

“I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.”

— Bertrand Russell

God

“I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.”

— Bertrand Russell

Food

“The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.”

— Bertrand Russell

Dad

“Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.”

— Bertrand Russell

Freedom

“Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.”

— Bertrand Russell

History

“Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.”

— Bertrand Russell

Freedom