"Obviousness is always the enemy of correctness."
Read quote
51 likes
Quote collection
Bertrand Russell quotes (page 4 of 60)
1.2K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men."
Read quote
51 likes
"By self-interest, Man has become gregarious, but in instinct he has remained to a great extent solitary; hence the need of religion and morality to reinforce self-interest."
Read quote
51 likes
"Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities."
Read quote
51 likes
"I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious."
Read quote
50 likes
"An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never come across any other human being, might conclude that it is the nature of human beings to grow continually taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards perfection; and this generalization would be just as well founded as the generalization which evolutionists base upon the previous history of this planet."
Read quote
50 likes
"The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation."
Read quote
49 likes
"If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody, and no unemployment — assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to use so much leisure."
Read quote
49 likes
"No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate?"
Read quote
48 likes
"The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was “given” by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?"
Read quote
48 likes
"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."
Read quote
47 likes
"The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself."
Read quote
47 likes
"Boys and girls should be taught respect for each other's liberty... and that jealousy and possessiveness kill love."
Read quote
47 likes
"To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
Read quote
46 likes
"There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths."
Read quote
45 likes
"When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man."
Read quote
44 likes
"One of the most interesting and harmful delusions to which men and nations can be subjected is that of imagining themselves special instruments of the Divine Will."
Read quote
44 likes
"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."
Read quote
44 likes
"Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality."
Read quote
43 likes
"We must be skeptical even of our skepticism."
Read quote
43 likes