Bertrand Russell

Bekannte Zitate von Bertrand Russell

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.

Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.

The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

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

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

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.

Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

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

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.

The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.

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.

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.

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.

Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.

Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.

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

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

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.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.

Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.