1,551 Quotes by Bertrand Russell

There are three ways of securing a society that shall be stable as regards population. The first is that of birth control, the second that of infanticide or really destructive wars, and the third that of general misery except for a powerful minority.

If the West can claim superiority in anything, it is . . . in science and scientific technique.

One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his or her work important.

Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people's.

We may often do as we please - but we cannot please as we please.

I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy.

Our instinctive emotions are those that we have inherited from a much more dangerous world, and contain, therefore, a larger portion of fear than they should.

Beware the man of the single book

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.