Quotes by Bertrand Russell

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I'm so busy I had to countermand my date of death.

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To die for a conviction is to place great importance on probabilities.

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Unfortunately, the world is built this way: fools are full of self, and smart people are full of doubt.

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He who truly enjoys authority is not afraid to admit his mistake.

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The time he doesn't spend in front of the mirror he uses to face his bonds.

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Fear is the main source of prejudice and one of the main sources of cruelty.

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The compatibility of cruelty with a clean conscience is for moralists a peak of the fantastic. That's why they invented hell.

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The meaning of philosophy consists in starting with something obvious and finishing with what is paradoxical.

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A happy life must be largely peaceful because true happiness can only exist in an atmosphere of peace.

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Boredom is a serious problem for the moralist, because at least half of mankind's sins are committed out of boredom.

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The human species is an error. Without it, the universe would have been sublime.

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Religious tolerance only came about because we stopped giving religion as much importance as we used to.

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Knowing how to use your free time rationally - this is the highest level of civilization.

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Philosophy: when you start from something so simple that it's not even worth discussing and you end up with something so paradoxical that you can't believe it.

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Those who are not happy and those who sleep badly have become accustomed to pride themselves on this.

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I like mathematics because there is nothing human about it, because it has nothing to do with our planet and our universe. Because love for her is unrequited.

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I have always considered respectable people to be scoundrels, and now every morning I look in the mirror to see if any trace of scoundrelness has appeared.

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Ethics is the attempt to give great importance to some of our desires.

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People want to be loved, but not to be endured out of persistent pity.

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A sense of duty is necessary for one job, but insulting in many other ways.

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To have a long life we ​​must choose our ancestors very carefully.

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Pure mathematics is such an object where we do not know what we are talking about and we do not know whether the thing we are talking about is true.

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Man is a confident being, he must believe in something, if not in good, then in bad.

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The more we are talked about, the more we want to be talked about. The criminal condemned to death is allowed to read the report of his trial in the newspapers, and will be furious if he finds that any newspaper has not given enough space to his trial.

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Man shows his superiority over the animals, except for his ability to be boring.

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Man dreams all his life. Sometimes he wakes up to reality for a moment and drowsily gazes at the world, then sinks back into a sweet dream.

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Thinking requires effort and preparation. Politicians are too busy making speeches to think.

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We live with a double standard; one we share but don't use in practice, and the other we use but rarely share.

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Science is what we know, philosophy is what we don't know.

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Fear before an accident only intensifies the possibility that it will occur.

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I know of no living being, except perhaps insects, who are distinguished by their immense need to learn from their mistakes, like men.

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Our emotions are inversely proportional to our knowledge; the less we know, the more we ignite.

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An idea isn't original if we can't make a living with it.

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We are not talking about faith when we talk about two times two making four or that the earth is round. We speak of faith only when we wish to exchange evidence for feelings.

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We love those who hate our enemies, and therefore, if we had no enemies, we would love no one.

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Many are ready to die rather than think.

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The opinions of the average man are much less clumsy than they would be if each of these men thought for himself.

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Cars are adored because they are beautiful; cars are valued because they are full of power. Cars are hated because they are disgusting, cars are despised because they enslave people.

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The universe we live in can be understood as the result of chaos and chance, then this goal belongs even to an enemy of humanity.

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Matter is not part of the matter of the finite world but merely a convenient method of linking events into a whole.

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People prone to megalomania differ from people prone to narcissism in that they want to be powerful rather than attractive, to be feared rather than loved. To this type of man belong many demented persons and a great part of the famous men known in history.

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Do not try to avoid temptations: in time, they themselves will begin to avoid you.

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It is not desirable to believe in a hypothesis when you have no firm reason to consider it correct.

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Few can be happy till the end of their life without feeling hatred towards another man, nation, religion.....

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The poor do not envy the millionaires, but the poor who receive more of the alms.

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Only in a democracy do fools have the right to vote, and in a dictatorship to rule.

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"To live right" is to pretend, "to think right" is nonsense.

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The truth is that thing that each of us is obliged to tell the policeman.

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Visiting China, I rate laziness as one of the most important human qualities.

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Bad philosophers may have some influence in society, but good influence - never.

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Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for the most trivial reasons. Patriots always say that they are ready to die for the country and never that they are ready to kill for the country.

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To get rid of fear is impossible only for the one who knows his place; only he who knows his nothingness can achieve greatness.

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Organic life, as is known, evolves from the single-celled organism to the philosopher, and its evolution, we are assured, is undoubtedly progressive. It is bad that this assurance is given to us by the philosopher and not by the single-celled organism.

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Hating your enemies is easier and more exciting than loving your friends.

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It is the unseemly act that terrifies an uneducated old judge.

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There is nothing more tiring and useful than indecision.

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No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.

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The dwelling of the soul can only be built on the enduring foundation of endless despair.

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He is not a gentleman: he dresses very well.

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The art of propaganda, as it is understood by modern politicians, is closely related to the art of advertising. Psychology, like science, is in many ways indebted to the advertiser.

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Of all types of prudence, prudence in love is far more harmful to true happiness.

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From discussions with my scientist husband I always conclude that happiness is not given to us; but when I talk to the gardener, I convince myself of the opposite.

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Envy - here is the foundation of democracy.

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If a certain point of view is very widespread, it does not mean that it is absurd. More than that. Considering the stupidity of most people, that widely held view would be stupid rather than national.

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If God existed, it is unlikely that he would be so conceited as to resent those who doubt his existence.

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Every man surrounds himself with comforting convictions that swarm around him like a swarm of flies on a summer's day.

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How sad that people only agree with those things that, in fact, do not even interest them.

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When the nuns, who wash without taking off their bathrobes, are asked why they need to be so careful, that no one sees them, they answer: "But God? He just sees them all!”

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When we think of mankind, we think first of all of ourselves; no wonder we appreciate humanity so much.

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When the path from the means to the end is not very long, the means become no less attractive than the end itself.

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When the interlocutor reinforces the fact that he is telling the truth, you can not doubt - he is lying.

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Personal vanity is wasted by friends, the familiar by the classmate, the class by politics, and the national by defeat in battle. But the vanity of mankind remains...

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Love is the best way to escape the loneliness that plagues most men and women throughout their lives.

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It is unlikely that Simeon the Pillar would have been fully satisfied if he had learned that another saint would have stayed longer on a much narrower tower.

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Diagnosis has progressed so much that there are almost no healthy people left.

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In this dangerous century of ours there are many people who love misery and death and get very angry when hopes are fulfilled.

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In our great democratic society, as it once was, there is the opinion that the stupid man is mostly more honest than the smart one, and our politicians, using this prejudice in their own interest, pretend to be much more stupid than they really are .

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Our schools do not teach what is most important, namely the art of reading newspapers.

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Instead of killing your neighbor, even if you hate him very much, you must, with the help of propaganda, transfer your hatred of your neighbor to a neighboring state, and then your criminal impulses will miraculously transform into the heroism of the patriot.

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During the shipwreck, the team carries out the captain's orders without thinking, because the sailors have a common goal, but also the means to achieve this goal are obvious and clear. But if this captain, like the government, were to begin to explain to the sailors his principles of running the ship to demonstrate the legality of the orders given, the ship would sink before he could finish his speech.

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At all times, from the reign of Constantine until the end of the 17th century, Christians were cruelly persecuted by other Christians, as the Roman emperors once did.

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Here, on this shelf, is the Bible. And I keep it with Voltaire - both are like poison and antidote.

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Universal history is the totality of all things that could have been avoided.

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Any exact science is based on approximations.

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Each feeling taken separately is madness. Rational judgment might be defined as a synthesis of madness... He who would retain his rational judgment must assemble a whole parliament of the most possible horrors, each of which would become better than the others.

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Would you give your life for your ideas? - Of course not.

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After all, I can be wrong.

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The most important shortcoming of fathers is that they want their children to be proud of them.

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Even in a civilized society the instinct of monogamy speaks for itself.

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Even if they all hold the same opinion, they could all be wrong.

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Indeed, the greatest thinkers of mankind are indifferent to happiness, especially to the happiness of other people.

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To be afraid of love is to be afraid of life, and he who is afraid of life is half dead.

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In a democracy, an honest politician can only be tolerated if he is very stupid. For only a foolish politician can honestly share the prejudices of half a nation.

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In America, everyone is firmly convinced that there is no one above him in the social hierarchy. It is true, but there is no one below him.

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The idea according to which the existence of natural laws necessitates the existence of a legislator actually results from mixing up the concepts of natural and human laws. Human laws are injunctions that command us to behave in a certain way; but we either follow them or we don't. However, natural laws are merely descriptions of how things actually behave, and since they are merely descriptions of actual behavior, we cannot say that there must be someone who ordered them to behave that way.

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If we look at what we know about the behavior of atoms, we find that they obey much less laws than previously thought; the laws that dictate their behavior actually refer to statistical averages that are calculated from random events. There is a law, as we all know, that if you roll a die twice, you will get two sixes about once in 36 times. We do not consider this as evidence that the result of the dice roll is regulated by a precisely designed law - on the contrary, if we get two sixes in every case, then we will think that the result was consciously planned. A significant number of natural laws are of this nature.

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If everything must have a reason, then God must have a reason. If anything can exist without a cause, that something could be the world as well as God, so the argument cannot be valid. Indeed, it is of the same nature as the Hindu view that the world stands on an elephant and the elephant on a tortoise; and when the Hindu is asked: "And what does the tortoise stand for?", he answers: "Let's change the subject." The argument of the First Reason is no more. There is no reason why the world could not have come into existence without a cause; on the other hand, there is no reason why it could not exist from eternity. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that everything must have a beginning is really a poverty of our imagination.

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Man is the product of causes that did not foresee the end result; its origin, development, hopes and fears, loves and beliefs are merely the result of the accidental connection of atoms.

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Fear is a major source of superstition and cruelty. Overcoming fear is the beginning of wisdom.

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Mathematics (...) can be defined as a subject in which we neither know what we are talking about nor whether what we say is true.

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One of the main goals of mathematics - if it is taught correctly - is to inspire the student's faith in reason, to instill in him confidence in the truth of proven things and the value of proof.

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The only good in an individual's life is virtue; things like health, happiness, wealth don't matter. Since virtue resides in the will, everything truly good or bad in a person's life depends on himself. You may get poor, but what does that matter? You can still be virtuous. You can be imprisoned by a tyrant, but you can still live in harmony with nature. He may be sentenced to death, but he may die nobly like Socrates. Other people have power only over external things; virtue, the only true good, is entirely within us. Therefore, everyone who frees himself from the power of worldly desires is perfectly free.

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As far as I can remember, there is not a single word in the Gospels praising intelligence.

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Many Orthodox speak as if it is the job of the skeptic to refute emerging dogmas, not the job of the dogmatist to justify them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to claim that somewhere between Mars and Earth there was a porcelain teapot orbiting the Sun in an elliptical orbit, no one would be able to disprove my claim, especially if I were to add that it was a tiny teapot that could be seen with the most powerful telescope on Earth. is not visible either. If, on the other hand, I were to say that since my statement cannot be refuted, it is intolerable arrogance on the part of humanity, if they doubt it, then everyone could rightly say that I am talking nonsense. However, if the existence of this teapot were claimed by ancient books, proclaimed as a holy truth on Sundays and drilled into the minds of children in schools, then doubting this would be a sign of abnormality, which psychiatrists in an enlightened age, and earlier the Inquisition, are notable for.

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The vast majority of intellectual eminences do not believe in the Christian religion, but do not confess it publicly for fear of losing their income.

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No one really worries about things that will only happen in millions of years. Even if someone feels worried about it, they are really only fooling themselves. You are worried about something else, much more mundane, or you simply have bad digestion; but no one really becomes seriously unhappy at the thought of something that will happen to the world in millions and millions of years. So, even though it's depressing to think that life will die out someday - at least I think most people think it's depressing, although sometimes when I think about what people do with their lives, I find the thought almost comforting - it doesn't make our current life miserable. This thought merely prompts us to do other things.

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If we look at the design argument, it's really amazing that some people think that this world, with all the things in it and all its faults, is the best that an omnipotent and omniscient power could have created in millions of years. I can't believe this. Do you think that if they were all-powerful and all-knowing and given millions of years to perfect their world, they wouldn't be able to come up with anything better than the Ku Klux Klan and the fascists?

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Kant was like many other people: he was a skeptic in intellectual matters, but in moral matters he deeply believed in the principles that he imbibed as a small child. This also illustrates what psychoanalysts have been emphasizing so much recently: our experiences in the earliest stages of our lives have an immeasurably greater impact on us than later ones.

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There is a great deal of injustice in the part of the Universe as we know it; the good often suffer, and the bad live and thrive, and often we don't even know which is more embarrassing. If, on the other hand, the Universe as a whole is just, then we must assume an afterlife that compensates for earthly suffering and restores the balance. So those who argue in this way say: there must be a god, and there must be heaven and hell in order for there to be truth in the long run. This is a very strange argument. If we were to look at the matter from a scientific point of view, we would reason like this: "After all, I only know this world. I don't know anything about the rest of the Universe, but - to the extent that anything can be said on the basis of probability - this world can certainly be considered a good sampling, and if there is injustice here there is, then there is every chance that there is injustice elsewhere". If we receive a crate of oranges, and upon opening the crate we see that the oranges in the top layer are spoiled, we do not say: "The ones below must be good to restore the balance", but rather: "Probably the whole crate is spoiled comes from shipment".

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A quiet life is to some extent a prerequisite for a happy life, since the true joy of life can only be conceived in an atmosphere of silence and tranquility.

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Even if time exists, recognizing its insignificance is the gateway to wisdom.

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We should not long for a ready-made utopia, but for a world where imagination and hope live with us.

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The ultimate result of civilization is if we manage to fill our free time with reason.

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Overcoming self-deception is the basic condition for more secure and lasting happiness.

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One of the symptoms of an impending nervous breakdown is believing that our own work is terribly important.

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When someone behaves in a way that annoys us, we immediately think that person is bad. We are not willing to face the fact that his unpleasant behavior is the result of previous factors which, if we go back long enough, turn out to have existed long before the unpleasant individual was born - in other words, the unpleasant individual cannot even be held responsible for his behavior.

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We must make our world the best it can be, and if it is not as good as we want it to be, it will ultimately be better than what others have made it in past historical eras.

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If we look around the world, we see that the organized churches have consistently opposed and continue to oppose every small step that would lead to a more humane world: every improvement in penal laws, every step to end wars, every improvement in the treatment of people of color , the reduction of all forms of slavery - every step of the world's moral progress. I declare openly: the Christian religion, in its form organized into churches, has always been the main enemy of the world's moral progress, and it still is today.

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According to the portrayal of the Gospels, Jesus certainly believed in eternal penance, and in several places we encounter the expression of vengeful anger towards those people who did not listen to his sermons. Such an attitude is not uncommon among preachers, but it is difficult to reconcile with special excellence. We do not find this attitude in Socrates, for example. Socrates was very gentle and kind to those who did not want to listen to him; and I think this conduct is more worthy of a sage than impetuousness.

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It is not intellectual arguments at all that lead people to believe in God. Most people believe in God because they have been taught this since childhood, and this is the main reason.

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Science is what we know. Philosophy is what it is not.

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The stronger the religion was in a given period, the deeper the belief in dogmas, the greater the cruelty and the worse things turned out. In the "Age of Faith", when people really believed in the Christian religion, in all its details and entirety, well, that's when the Inquisition was operating, that's when the tortures were. Millions of unfortunate women were burned for witchcraft, and all kinds of cruelties were perpetrated against all kinds of people - in the name of religion.

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Most people would rather die than think. Many people die.

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The people who risk the most in this world are those who never take the slightest risk.

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Patriots always talk about dying for their country and never about killing for it.

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The majority clings resolutely to the existing; the wheel of progress is always moved by a minority.

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The question is not whether we want to believe, but whether we want to learn - and this is just the opposite.

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The task of the man of science is not only to cope with the sciences of which man is the subject, but - and this is a much more difficult thing - he must also persuade the world to embrace what he has discovered. If this enterprise is not crowned with success, man will destroy himself with his half-way cleverness.

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Of all forms of prudence, perhaps prudence in love is the most fatal to true happiness.

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The trouble with the world is that stupid people are dead sure of everything, smart people are full of doubts.

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That man is the result of causes which do not in the least care for the end to which they lead him; that its origin, its growth, its hopes and fears, its love and faith, are nothing but the process of a fortuitous combination of atoms; that neither passion, nor heroism, nor intensity of thought and feeling can save the individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotions, all the inspirations, all the brilliance of human genius brighter than the sun, are doomed to be extinguished in the crushing death of the solar system, and the temple of Man's creation to find its grave among the ruins of a ruined Universe—all these things, if they are not entirely beyond dispute, but they are so close to the truth that no philosophy can hope to be accepted if it rejects them.

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It is not good for young or old to spend a lot of time thinking about death.

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Without testing and verification, intuition alone is insufficient for truth.

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This world was actually created by the devil at a time when God was not paying attention.

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Sin is also a geographical concept.

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Being without certain things that we want is an essential part of happiness.

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A good world requires knowledge, goodwill and courage; there is no need to brood regretfully over the past, nor to fetter free reason with the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. A fearless stance and a free mind are needed. We must hope for the future, and not forever look back to the past, which is already dead and which - we trust - will be far surpassed by the future, which we create with our intellect.

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We want to stand on our own two feet and look at the world without distortion - the good things, the bad things, the beauty and the ugliness of the world; we want to see the world as it is and not be afraid of it. To conquer the world with reason, not slavishly subjecting ourselves to its horrors.

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Mathematics, if we understand it correctly, is characterized not only by truth, but also by a high order of beauty: cold and austere, a beauty similar to that of sculpture, which does not appeal to any part of our weaker nature, and which lacks the dazzling props of painting and music, but is majestically pure , and is capable of a strict perfection that only the greatest art can show.

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Reason is not so much a creative force as a coordinating and controlling one. Even in the most purely logical realm, it is intuition that first arrives at the new.

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We could all have been born five minutes ago, with ready-to-use memories, holey socks, and hair in need of a trim.

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Never do the same stupid thing twice, as there is quite a selection!

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Those who have never known the deep interiority of mutual happy love and close belonging have missed out on the best that life can give - they feel this, if not consciously, then unconsciously, and the resulting disappointment makes them prone to envy, oppression and cruelty.

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Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; he can easily be killed by the thought of duty. Knowing that you have a duty to love someone is the surest way to hate them.

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People are born ignorant, not stupid; education makes them stupid.

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Why repeat the mistakes of our predecessors when there are so many new mistakes to make?

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I want to know what dwells in the hearts of men, why the stars shine, and why the order of things is dictated by the Pythagorean force residing in numbers.

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Religion, in my opinion, is first and foremost based on fear. It is partly about the fear of the unknown, and partly, as I said, about the desire to feel some kind of "elder brother" by our side, who is with us in all our problems and conflicts.