1,551 Quotes by Bertrand Russell

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

Power may be defined as the production of intended effects. It is thus a quantitative concept: given two men with similar desires, if one achieves all the desires that the other achieves, and also others, he has more power than the other.

The power impulse has two forms: explicit, in leaders; implicit in their followers. When men willingly follow a leader, they do so with a view to the acquisition of power by the group which he commands, and they feel that his triumphs are theirs.

Language serves not only to express thoughts but to make possible thoughts that could not exist without it.

There is power over human beings and power over dead matter or non-human forms of life.

If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation will you prefer the grain to vote?

Love of power, in its widest sense, is the desire to be able to produce intended effects upon the outer world, whethen human or non-human.

Boys and girls should be taught respect for each others liberty, and that jealousy and possessiveness kill love.

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.