Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, essayist, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate. These Bertrand Russell Quotes on religion, work, life education, etc will Inspire you.
Best Bertrand Russell Quotes
- “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
- “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
- “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
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“Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.” ~ 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
- “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
- “Religion is based … mainly upon fear … fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.” ~ Bertrand Russell
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“Grasshopper always wrong in argument with chicken.” ~ 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. […] The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology, there is the only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.” ~ Bertrand Russell
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“Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.” ~ 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
- “Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.” ~ Bertrand Russell
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“The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” ~ 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 widespread interest in gossip is inspired, not by a love of knowledge but by malice: no one gossips about other people’s secret virtues, but only about their secret vices. Accordingly, most gossip is untrue, but care is taken not to verify it. Our neighbor’s sins, like the consolations of religion, are so agreeable that we do not stop to scrutinize the evidence closely.” ~ 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 Quotes
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“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “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.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “Herd pressure is to be judged by two things: first, its intensity, and second, its direction.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “You must believe that you can help bring about a better world.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since there are no criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but mutual hatred and an open or covert appeal to force.” ~ Bertrand Russell
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“A smile happens in a flash, but its memory can last a lifetime.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “Passive acceptance of the teacher’s wisdom is easy for most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the favor of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position.” ~ 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
- “I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “Almost all education has a political motive: it aims at strengthening some group, national or religious or even social, in the competition with other groups. It is this motive, in the main, which determines the subjects taught, the knowledge offered and the knowledge withheld and also decides what mental habits the pupils are expected to acquire. Hardly anything is done to foster the inward growth of mind and spirit; in fact, those who have had the most education are very often atrophied in their mental and spiritual life.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “More important than the curriculum is the question of the methods of teaching and the spirit in which the teaching is given” ~ Bertrand Russell Quotes
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“To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “Most human beings, though in varying degrees, desire to control, not only their own lives but also the lives of others” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “Cruel men believe in a cruel god and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly god, and they would be kindly in any case.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “No man treats a motorcar as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behavior to sin; he does not say, ‘You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go.’ He attempts to find out what is wrong and to set it right.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “An Honest politician will not be tolerated by a democracy unless he is very stupid … because only a very stupid man can honestly share the prejudices of more than half the nation.” ~ Bertrand Russell
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“No great achievement is possible without persistent work.” ~ 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, Bertrand Russell Quotes on life
- “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.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people’s.” ~ 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
- “People seem good while they are oppressed, but they only wish to become oppressors in their turn: life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “Belief systems provide a program which relieves the necessity of thought.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.” ~ Bertrand Russell
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“War doesn’t determine who’s right, it determines who’s left” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “One of the most powerful of all our passions is the desire to be admired and respected.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “It is likely that America will be more important during the next century or two, but after that, it may well be the turn of China.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “The problem with the wise is they are so filled with doubts while the dull are so certain.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “Love should be a tree whose roots are deep in the earth, but whose branches extend into heaven.” ~ Bertrand Russell
- “The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of happiness he has and the less he is at the mercy of fate, since if he loses one thing he can fall back upon another.” ~ Bertrand Russell
