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Bertrand Russell

1872 - 1970. British author, mathematician and philosopher.

1. "War does not determine who is right - only who is left."

categories: Peace and War

2. "To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead."

source: "Marriage and Morals"

categories: Life and Death -:- Love -:- Bravery and Fear

3. "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. "

categories: Joy and Sadness -:- Time and Passing

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

categories: Happiness

5. "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."

categories: Life and Death

6. "The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell."

source: "Sceptical Essays"

categories: Manners and Ethics -:- Sin and Conscience

7. "The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge."

source: "What I Believe"

categories: Good and Evil -:- Love -:- Knowledge, Ignorance

8. "The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them."

categories: Family and Loneliness

9. "Science seems to be at war with itself. Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false. "

categories: Science and Technology -:- Truth and Falsity

10. "Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination."

categories: Science and Technology -:- Knowledge, Ignorance -:- Reality and Imagination

11. "Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know."

categories: Science and Technology -:- Knowledge, Ignorance

12. "Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country."

categories: Patriotism

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

categories: Health and Alcohol -:- Work and Laziness

14. "Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact."

source: "Conquest of Happiness"

categories: Happiness

15. "Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education."

source: "A History of Western Philosophy"

categories: Wisdom and Stupidity -:- Education -:- Knowledge, Ignorance

16. "Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture."

source: "Philosophical Essays"

categories: Beauty and Ugliness -:- Science and Technology

17. "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."

source: "Mysticism and Logic"

categories: Science and Technology

18. "Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so."

categories: Intellect, Judgement -:- Wisdom and Stupidity

19. "Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable, and praised when they are not praiseworthy."

categories: Love

20. "Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones."

source: "Unpopular Essays"

categories: Human

21. "It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this."

categories: Human -:- Intellect, Judgement

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

categories: Authority, Government -:- Law and Crime

23. "Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavour after a worthy manner of life."

source: "Unpopular Essays"

categories: Bravery and Fear

24. "Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty."

categories: Bravery and Fear -:- Good and Evil

25. "Envy is the basis of democracy."

source: "Conquest of Happiness"

categories: Envy -:- Politics and Diplomacy

26. "Drunkenness [...] is temporary suicide."

source: "The Conquest of Happiness"

categories: Health and Alcohol

27. "Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. "

categories: Manners and Ethics

28. "Boredom is therefore a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it."

categories: Sin and Conscience -:- Various

29. "A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something that he can understand. "

source: "A History of Western Philosophy"

categories: Wisdom and Stupidity

30. "A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress - though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known."

categories: Human -:- Nature and Animals