Quotes From Famous Authors

A   •  B   •  C   •  D   •  E   •  F   •  G   •  H   •  I   •  J   •  K   •  L   •  M   •  N   •  O   •  P   •  Q   •  R   •  S   •  T   •  U   •  V   •  W   •  Y   •  Z   • 

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.
Bertrand Russell

Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.
Bertrand Russell

Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.
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

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
Bertrand Russell

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
Bertrand Russell

Liberty is the right to do what I like; license, the right to do what you like.
Bertrand Russell

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
Bertrand Russell

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
Bertrand Russell

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves.
Bertrand Russell

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
Bertrand Russell

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
Bertrand Russell

Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.
Bertrand Russell

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
Bertrand Russell

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
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 widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
Bertrand Russell /Marriage and Morals/

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
Bertrand Russell

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
Bertrand Russell

The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.
Bertrand Russell

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

There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate government action.
Bertrand Russell /An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish/

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
Bertrand Russell

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.
Bertrand Russell

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
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

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
Bertrand Russell

What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.
Bertrand Russell

Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?
Bertrand Russell