By Arun - Mar 17
- 5 min read
Bertrand Russell was a great philosopher and mathematician in the last century. His contemporaries were deeply influenced by his thoughts. Here is a comprehensive list of 50 quotes from Russel’s writings. You can include them in your wisdom good morning quotes list. However, here are several notable quotes from Bertrand Russell, along with their respective sources:
- “The fundamental cause of trouble is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” Source: “The Triumph of Stupidity” (1933)
- “To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.” Source: “Marriage and Morals” (1929)
- “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” Source: “The Triumph of Stupidity” (1933)
- “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.” Source: “Conquest of Happiness” (1930)
- “The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.” Source: “What I Believe” (1925)
- “War does not determine who is right – only who is left.” Source: Attributed to Bertrand Russell
- “Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don’t know.” Source: Attributed to Bertrand Russell
- “The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.” Source: “The Conquest of Happiness” (1930)
- “A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.” Source: “A History of Western Philosophy” (1945)
- “The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” Source: Attributed to Bertrand Russell
- “In all affairs, it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.” Source: “Education and the Social Order” (1932)
- “One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” Source: “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell” (1967)
- “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” Source: “The Triumph of Stupidity” (1933)
- “Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.” Source: “The ABC of Relativity” (1925)
- “To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.” Source: “The Conquest of Happiness” (1930)
- “Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.” Source: “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell” (1967)
- “It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.” Source: “Principles of Social Reconstruction” (1916)
- “The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.” Source: “Marriage and Morals” (1929)
- “The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.” Source: “Human Society in Ethics and Politics” (1954)
- “Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.” Source: “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell” (1967)
- “The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.” Source: “The Conquest of Happiness” (1930)
- “The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.” Source: “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays” (1917)
- “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” Source: “The Triumph of Stupidity” (1933)
- “The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.” Source: “What I Believe” (1925)
- “To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” Source: “An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish” (1943)
- “The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.” Source: “Unpopular Essays” (1950)
- “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.”
28. “Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth.”
Source: Why Men Fight (1917)
29. “To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy can do.”
Source: A History of Western Philosophy (1945)
30. “The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.”
Source: Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954)
31. “Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.”
Source: A Liberal Decalogue (1951)
32. “Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.”
Source: Principles of Social Reconstruction (1916)
33. “Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.”
Source: The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918)
34. “To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.”
Source: The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
35. “A good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”
Source: What I Believe (1925)
36. “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 a paradise in a few years.”
Source: The Impact of Science on Society (1952)
37. “Boredom is therefore a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.”
Source: The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
38. “It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it.”
Source: Religion and Science (1935)
39. “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Source: The Triumph of Stupidity (1933)
40. “Genuine happiness is possible only when we feel united with the deepest purposes of life.”
Source: The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
41. “We need a morality based upon love of life, upon pleasure in growth and positive achievement, not upon repression and prohibition.”
Source: Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954)
42. “Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.”
Source: The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
43. “Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.”
Source: Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1929)
44. “The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists.”
Source: Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays (1917)
45. “A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.”
Source: The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
46. “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.”
Source: Unpopular Essays (1950)
47. “One should always respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.”
Source: The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
48. “The resistance to new ideas increases with the square of their importance.”
Source: The Scientific Outlook (1931)
49. “Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.”
Source: Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954)
50. “Freedom in education is the chief means for the propagation of intelligence.”
Source: On Education (1926)