Bertrand Russell quotes - page 10

I resolved from the beginning of my quest that I would not be misled by sentiment and desire into beliefs for which there was no good evidence. (Bertrand Russell)
What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Ironclads and Maxim guns must be the ultimate arbiters of metaphysical truth. View quote
Bertrand Russell
I am looking forward very much to getting back to Cambridge, and being able to say what I think and not to mean what I say: two things which at home are impossible. Cambridge is one of the few places where one can talk unlimited nonsense and generalities without anyone pulling one up or confronting one with them when one says just the opposite the next day. View quote
Bertrand Russell
It seems clear to me that marriage ought to be constituted by children, and relations not involving children ought to be ignored by the law and treated as indifferent by public opinion. It is only through children that relations cease to be a purely private matter. View quote
Bertrand Russell
The supreme maxim in scientific philosophising is this: wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities. View quote
Bertrand Russell
A world without delight and without affection is a world destitute of value. View quote
Bertrand Russell
To choose one sock from each of infinitely many pairs of socks requires the Axiom of Choice, but for shoes the Axiom is not needed. View quote
Bertrand Russell
There is a further advantage [to hydrogen bombs]: the supply of uranium in the planet is very limited, and it might be feared that it would be used up before the human race was exterminated, but now that the practically unlimited supply of hydrogen can be utilized, there is considerable reason to hope that homo sapiens may put an end to himself, to the great advantage of such less ferocious animals as may survive. But it is time to return to less cheerful topics. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful; therefore the worse they are performed, the better. View quote
Bertrand Russell
While I am as convinced a Socialist as the most ardent Marxian, I do not regard Socialism as a gospel of proletarian revenge, nor even, primarily, as a means of securing economic justice. I regard it primarily as an adjustment to machine production demanded by considerations of common sense, and calculated to increase the happiness, not only of proletarians, but of all except a tiny minority of the human race. (Bertrand Russell)
All the time that he can spare from the adornment of his person, he devotes to the neglect of his duties. View quote
Bertrand Russell
There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere. View quote
Bertrand Russell
[The church] is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy. View quote
Bertrand Russell
I believe that Communism is necessary to the world, and I believe that the heroism of Russia has fired men's hopes in a way which was essential to the realization of Communism in the future. Regarded as a splendid attempt, without which ultimate success would have been very improbable, Bolshevism deserves the gratitude and admiration of all the progressive part of mankind. View quote
Bertrand Russell
I must confess that I am deeply troubled. I fear that human beings are intent upon acting out a vast deathwish and that it lies with us now to make every effort to promote resistance to the insanity and brutality of policies which encompass the extermination of hundreds of millions of human beings. View quote
Bertrand Russell
The typical Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment; the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as possible. View quote
Bertrand Russell
I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness. View quote
Bertrand Russell
I believe that the abolition of private ownership of land and capital is a necessary step toward any world in which the nations are to live at peace with one another. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active. View quote
Bertrand Russell
In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards. (Bertrand Russell)
Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Never let yourself be diverted either by what you would wish to believe or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. Look only at ... the facts. View quote
Bertrand Russell
I do not believe that I am now dreaming, but I cannot prove that I am not. I am, however, quite certain that I am having certain experiences, whether they be those of a dream or those of waking life. View quote
Bertrand Russell
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. View quote
Bertrand Russell