Bertrand Russell Quotes - Page 2

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.

Grammar and ordinary language are bad guides to metaphysics. A great book might be written showing the influence of syntax on philosophy.

The method of 'postulating' what we want has many advantages ; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.

It is evident as a matter of logic that, since they (world religions) disagree, not more than one of them can be true.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.

Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people's.

It is essential to happiness that our way of living should spring from our own deep impulses and not from the accidental tastes and desires of those who happen to be our neighbors, or even our relations.

To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.

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.

In adolescence, I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was restrained by the desire to know more mathematics.

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

Science can teach us, and I think our hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supporters, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make the world a fit place to live.

The Victorian Age, for all its humbug, was a period of rapid progress, because men were dominated by hope rather than fear. If we are again to have progress, we must again be dominated by hope.

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.

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

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.

We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.

Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.