"It is not my prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws."
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Quote collection
Bertrand Russell quotes (page 35 of 60)
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"The man who pursues happiness wisely will aim at the possession of a number of subsidiary interests in addition to those central ones upon which his life is built."
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"A marriage is likely to be called happy if neither party ever expected to get much happiness out of it."
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"...impregnation will be regarded in an entirely different manner, more in the light of a surgical operation, so that it will be thought not ladylike to have it performed in the natural manner."
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"No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor, but honest."
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"A good social system is not to be secured by making people unselfish, but, by making their own vital impulses fit in with other peoples. This is feasible. Those who have produced stoic philosophies have all had enough to eat and drink. I feel I shall find the truth on my deathbed and be surrounded by people too stupid to understand—fussing about medicines instead of searching for wisdom. I hate being all tidy like a book in a library where nobody reads – prison is horribly like that."
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"Public opinion is always more tyrannical towards those who obviously fear it than towards those who feel indifferent to it."
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"All traditional logic habitually assumes that precise symbols are being employed. It is therefore not applicable to this terrestial life but only to an imagined celestial existence... logic takes us nearer to heaven than other studies."
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"Dr. Arnold . . . the admired reformer of public schools, came across some cranks who thought it a mistake to flog boys. Anyone reading his outburst of furious indignation against this opinion will be forced to the conclusion that he enjoyed inflicting floggings."
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"Force plays a much larger part in the government of the world than it did before 1914, and what is especially alarming, force tends increasingly to fall into the hands of those who are enemies of civilization."
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"Civilized life, if it is to be stable, must provide a harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting. In Australia, where people are few, and rabbits are many, I watched the whole populace satisfying the primitive impulse in the primitive manner by the skilful slaughter of many thousands of rabbits."
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"As men begin to grow civilized, they cease to be satisfied with mere taboos."
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"As for earthquakes, though they were still formidable, they were so interesting that men of science could hardly regret them."
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"The best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration."
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"Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely."
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"Experience has taught me a technique for dealing with such people [...] I counter the devotees of the Great Pyramid by adoration of the Sphinx; and the devotee of nuts by pointing out that hazelnuts and walnuts are as deleterious as other foods and only Brazil nuts should be tolerated. But when I was younger I had not yet acquired this technique, with the result that my contacts with cranks were sometimes alarming."
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"... mathematical knowledge ... is, in fact, merely verbal knowledge. "3" means "2+1", and "4" means "3+1". Hence it follows (though the proof is long) that "4" means the same as "2+2". Thus mathematical knowledge ceases to be mysterious."
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"One of the chief triumphs of modern mathematics consists in having discovered what mathematics really is."
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"Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom."
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"Boys and young men acquire readily the moral sentiments of their social milieu, whatever these sentiments may be."
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