Quotes by Bertrand Russell

About Bertrand Russell:

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic and political activist. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these in any profound sense. He was born in Monmouthshire into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in Britain.
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From the standpoint of the upper classes, the system had many merits. They felt that what was paid out of the poor rate was charity, and therefore a proof of their benevolence; at the same time, wages were kept at starvation level by a method which j...

Bertrand Russell

When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant ...

Bertrand Russell

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even...

Bertrand Russell

John Locke invented common sense, and only Englishmen have had it ever since!

Bertrand Russell

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

Bertrand Russell

But without going to such extremes prudence may easily involve the loss of some of the best things in life. The worshipper of Dionysus reacts against prudence. In intoxication, physical or spiritual, he recovers an intensity of feeling which prudence...

Bertrand Russell

For the young, there is nothing unattainable; a good thing desired with the whole force of a passionate will, and yet impossible, is to them not credible. Yet, by death, by illness, by poverty, or by the voice of duty, we must learn, each one of us, ...

Bertrand Russell

The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish form our sight, ...

Bertrand Russell

Sometimes the hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn

Bertrand Russell

Russell observes that "the merits of democracy are negative: it does not ensure good government, but it prevents certain evils," such as the evil of a small group of individuals achieving a secure monopoly on political power. The chief peril for the ...

Bertrand Russell

All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they a...

Bertrand Russell

If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody and no unemployment -- assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poo...

Bertrand Russell

We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach.

Bertrand Russell

Having knowledge of an unethical act and allowing it to continue can spread a contagion that can affect multiple beings in society

Bertrand Russell

All the labor of all the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction. So now, my friends, if that is true, and it is true, what is the point?

Bertrand Russell

It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

Bertrand Russell

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

Bertrand Russell

For my part, I prefer the ontological argument, the cosmological argument and the rest of the old stock-in-trade, to the sentimental illogicality that has sprung from Rousseau.

Bertrand Russell

Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.

Bertrand Russell

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

Bertrand Russell

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.

Bertrand Russell

Author Bio

  • NameBertrand Russell
  • Descriptionlogician and one of the first analytic philosophers
  • AliasesBertrand Arthur William Russell
  • BornMay 18, 1872
  • DiedFebruary 2, 1970
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionMathematician; Social Critic; Essayist; Logician; Epistemologist; Philosopher Of Language; Political Activist; Metaphysician; Analytic Philosopher; Autobiographer; Writer
  • AwardsNobel Prize In Literature; Fellow Of The Royal Society; ; Kalinga Prize