Famous quotes by Bertrand Russell

The degree of one's emotion varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts -  the less you know the hotter you get.
- Bertrand Russell

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
- Bertrand Russell

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
- Bertrand Russell

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
- Bertrand Russell
 
I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux.
- Bertrand Russell

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
- Bertrand Russell

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
- Bertrand Russell 

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
- Bertrand Russell

Even when all the experts agree, they may well be mistaken.
- Bertrand Russell

We love our habits more than our income, often more than our life.
- Bertrand Russell

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.
- Bertrand Russell

The secret of happiness is this: Let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.
- Bertrand Russell

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
- Bertrand Russell

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair. In these words he epitomized the history of the human race
- Bertrand Russell

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
- Bertrand Russell

William James used to preach the "will to believe." For my part, I should wish to preach the "will to doubt" ... What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite.
- Bertrand Russell

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, Unpopular essays

All human activity is prompted by desire.
- Bertrand Russell

There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
- Bertrand Russell, Unpopular essays

Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false. 
- Bertrand Russell