01UndatedThe Victorian Age, for all its humbug, was a period of rapid progress, because men were dominated by hope rather than fear. If we are again to have progress, we must again be dominated by hope.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
02UndatedThe life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish form our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in times of despair.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
03UndatedI do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
04UndatedWhat is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
05UndatedNeither love without knowledge nor knowledge without love can produce a good life.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
06UndatedChange is scientific, ‘progress’ is ethical. Change is indubitable whereas progress is a matter of controversy.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
07UndatedOur great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
08UndatedWe know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
09UndatedEven if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
11UndatedIt is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
12UndatedAristotle 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.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
13UndatedFear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
14UndatedCollective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
15UndatedConquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
16UndatedNeither 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.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
17UndatedLove 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. There is a deep-seated fear, in most people, of the cold world and the possible cruelty of the herd; there is a longing for affection, which is often concealed by roughness, boorishness or a bullying manner in men, and by nagging and scolding in women. Passionate mutual love while it lasts puts an end to this feeling; it breaks down the hard walls of the ego, producing a new being composed of two in one.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
18UndatedIf we were all given by magic the power to read each other’s thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be almost all friendships would be dissolved; the second effect, however, might be excellent, for a world without any friends would be felt to be intolerable, and we should learn to like each other without needing a veil of illusion to conceal from ourselves that we did not think each other absolutely perfect.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
19UndatedIn the outworks of our lives, we were almost strangers, but we shared a certain outlook on human life and human destiny, which, from the very first, made a bond of extreme strength . . . . At our very first meeting, we talked with continually increasing intimacy. We seemed to sink through layer after layer of what was superficial, till gradually both reached the central fire. It was an experience unlike any other that I have known. We looked into each other's eyes, half appalled and half intoxicated to find ourselves together in such a region. The emotion was as intense as passionate love, and at the same time all-embracing. I came away bewildered, and hardly able to find my way among ordinary affairs.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
21UndatedI hate the world and almost all the people in it. I hate the Labour Congress and the journalists who send men to be slaughtered, and the fathers who feel a smug pride when their sons are killed, and even the pacifists who keep saying human nature is essentially good, in spite of all the daily proofs to the contrary. I hate the planet and the human race—I am ashamed to belong to such a species.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
22UndatedIn the Second World War he took no public part, having escaped to a neutral country just before its outbreak. In private conversation he was wont to say that homicidal lunatics were well employed in killing each other, but that sensible men would keep out of their way while they were doing it. Fortunately this outlook, which is reminiscent of Bentham, has become rare in this age, which recognizes that heroism has a value independent of its utility. The Last Survivor of a Dead EpochBertrand Russell / quote ↗
23UndatedMen fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid ... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
24UndatedIt is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.Bertrand Russell / quote ↗
