Bertrand Russell
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.Collection: Fear
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.Collection: War
I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.Collection: Food
Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.Collection: Life
Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.Collection: Freedom
There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.Collection: Respect
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.Collection: Happiness
Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.Collection: Happiness
Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.Collection: Wisdom
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.Collection: Happiness
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.Collection: Funny
Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.Collection: Freedom
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.Collection: Power
Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.Collection: Knowledge
Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.Collection: History
The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life, which is impossible to the pure egoist.Collection: Peace
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.Collection: Happiness
Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one.Collection: Courage
The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.Collection: Science
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.Collection: Happiness
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.
Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.
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.
No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
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.
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
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.
I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.
Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.
If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.
Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.
Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.
Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.
I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.
When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.
Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
Drunkenness is temporary suicide.
To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?