1,551 Quotes by Bertrand Russell

If two hitherto rival football teams, under the influence of brotherly love, decided to co-operate in placing the football first beyond one goal and then beyond the other, no one's happiness would be increased

Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.

The problem with the wise is they are so filled with doubts while the dull are so certain.

Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.

Most human beings, though in varying degrees, desire to control, not only their own lives but also the lives of others

Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.

I feel as if one would only discover on one's death bed what one ought to have lived for

The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists of the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself.

It is likely that America will be more important during the next century or two, but after that it may well be the turn of China.