1,551 Quotes by Bertrand Russell

As soon as we abandon our reason and are content to rely on authority, there is no end to our troubles.

Americans and Englishmen, when they become acquainted with the Balkans, feel an astonished contempt when they study the mutual enmities of Bulgarians and Serbs, of Hungarians and Rumanians. It is evident to them that these enmities are absurd and that the belief of each little nation in its own superiority has no objective basis. But most of them are quite unable to see that the national pride of a Great Power is essentially as unjustifiable as that of a little Balkan country.

Inferences of Science and Common Sense differ from those of deductive logic and mathematics in a very important respect, namely, when the premises are true and the reasoning correct, the conclusion is only probable.

All knowledge, we feel, must be built up upon our instinctive beliefs; and if these are rejected, nothing is left.

Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

Every living thing is a sort of imperialist, seeking to transform as much as possible of its environment into itself.

There can't be a practical reason for believing something that is not true.

Love is wise – Hatred is foolish.