Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Quotes

• I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

• 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.

• One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

• To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.

• Change is scientific, progress is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.

• Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin -- more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

• All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.

• It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather that the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.

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

• If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.

• The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

• Whereas in art nothing worth doing can be done without genius, in science even a very moderate capacity can contribute to a supreme achievement.

• The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so; at other times he thinks about others things.

• The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

• Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.

• 'Change' is scientific, 'progress' is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.

• In all things it is a good idea to hang a question mark now and then on the things we have taken for granted.

• Sin is geographical.

• I've always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel.

• Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.