Bertrand Russell was a famous British philosopher, mathematician, logician, social critic, and essayist. He was one of the prominent logicians of the 20th century known to be the founder of analytic philosophy. Here are the best Bertrand Russell quotes about love, life, education, knowledge, religion, God, and more.
Bertrand Russell was a renowned philosopher and political activist remembered for his altercations with the British Government. He is best known for leading the British ‘revolt against idealism’.
His work explored a wide range of topics, from the study of logic and mathematics to ethics, politics, and the pursuit of knowledge.
Russell’s profound insights on the nature of reality and the limitations of human understanding had a lasting impact on both academic and everyday discussions.
Throughout his career, Russell was an outspoken advocate for peace, human rights, and social justice. He also campaigned against the Vietnam War and was against using nuclear weapons.
His valuable writings on humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950.
Being a controversial figure in his time, Russell was an evangelical atheist whose writings and speeches often challenged the existence of a divine being.
These thought-provoking and inspirational Bertrand Russell quotes will offer valuable insights into the complexities of the human mind.
Top 10 Bertrand Russell Quotes
- “The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” — Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell Quotes - “War does not determine who is right – only who is left.” — Bertrand Russell
Quotes From Bertrand Russell - “I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.” — Bertrand Russell
- “The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.” — Bertrand Russell
Quotes Of Bertrand Russell - “Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.” — Bertrand Russell
Best Bertrand Russell Quotes - “Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.” — Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell Sayings - “The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.” — Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell Quotes On Life - “One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” — Bertrand Russell
- “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” — Bertrand Russell
- “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” — Bertrand Russell
Famous Quotes By Bertrand Russell
- “A man without a bias cannot write interesting history.” — Bertrand Russell
- “Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness is dead.” — Bertrand Russell
- “One must look into hell before one has any right to speak of heaven.” — Bertrand Russell
- “To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.” — Bertrand Russell
- “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.” — Bertrand Russell
- “To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.” — Bertrand Russell
- “There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.” — Bertrand Russell
- “War was always a great evil, but in some particularly extreme circumstances, it may be the lesser of two evils.” — Bertrand Russell
- “Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” — Bertrand Russell
- “If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do.” — Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell Quotes On Life
- “The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.” — Bertrand Russell
- “A smile happens in a flash, but its memory can last a lifetime.” — Bertrand Russell
- “The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.” — Bertrand Russell
- “It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.” — Bertrand Russell
- “The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.” — Bertrand Russell
- “The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.” — Bertrand Russell
- “One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” — Bertrand Russell
- “Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people’s happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.” — Bertrand Russell
- “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.” — Bertrand Russell
- “Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.” — Bertrand Russell
Philosopher Bertrand Russell Quotes
- “Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.” — Bertrand Russell
- “The key to happiness is accepting one unpleasant reality every day.” — Bertrand Russell
- “The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.” — Bertrand Russell
- “It’s easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.” — Bertrand Russell
- “Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.” — Bertrand Russell
- “The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” — Bertrand Russell
- “A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.” — 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.” — Bertrand Russell
- “It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.” — 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
Quotes Of Bertrand Russell
- “There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.” — Bertrand Russell
- “My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.” — Bertrand Russell
- “Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.” — Bertrand Russell
- “Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.” — 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
- “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
- “We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.” — Bertrand Russell
- “The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.” — Bertrand Russell
- “The most valuable things in life are not measured in monetary terms. The really important things are not houses and lands, stocks and bonds, automobiles and real state, but friendships, trust, confidence, empathy, mercy, love and faith.” — Bertrand Russell
- “The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.” — Bertrand Russell
Quotes From Bertrand Russell
- “Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.” — Bertrand Russell
- “Life is just one cup of coffee after another, and don’t look for anything else.” — Bertrand Russell
- “Belief systems provide a programme which relieves the necessity of thought.” — Bertrand Russell
- “Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.” — Bertrand Russell
- “The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.” — Bertrand Russell
- “Every man would like to be God, if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility.” — Bertrand Russell
- “The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.” — 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
- “To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.” — Bertrand Russell
- “Science does not aim at establishing immutable truths and eternal dogmas; its aim is to approach the truth by successive approximations, without claiming that at any stage final and complete accuracy has been achieved.” — Bertrand Russell
More Bertrand Russell Quotes
- “To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already 3-parts dead.” — Bertrand Russell
- “Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” — Bertrand Russell
- “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
- “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.” — Bertrand Russell
- “Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.” — Bertrand Russell
More About Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell, in full Bertrand Arthur William Russell, was a British philosopher, logician, and social reformer.
He was a founding figure in the analytic movement in Anglo-American philosophy, and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950.
Russell established him as one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th century. Throughout his career he published more than 70 books and about 2,000 articles.
Conclusion
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