1,551 Quotes by Bertrand Russell

When considering marriage one should ask oneself this question; ‘will I be able to talk with this person into old age?’ Everything else is transitory, the most time is spent in conversation.

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: “The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that’s fair.” In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.

While economics is about how people make choice, sociology is about how they don’t have any choice to make.

The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress. It’s coexistence or no existence.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

Patience and boredom are closely related. Boredom, a certain kind of boredom, is really impatience. You don’t like the way things are, they aren’t interesting enough for you, so you deccide- and boredom is a decision-that you are bored.

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

I have come to realize that an early symptom of approaching mental illness is the belief that one’s work is terribly important. If you consider your work very important you should take a day off.

A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.