1,551 Quotes by Bertrand Russell

Any philosophy worth taking seriously would have to be built upon a firm foundation of unyielding despair.

Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

The reason is, and by rights ought to be, slave to the emotions.

It is, of course, clear that a country with a large foreign population must endeavour, through its schools, to assimilate the children of immigrants. It is, however, unfortunate that a large part of this process should be effected by means of a somewhat blatant nationalism.

Man is a rational animal. So at least we have been told. Throughout a long life I have searched diligently for evidence in favor of this statement. So far, I have not had the good fortune to come across it.

Gradually, ... the aspect of science as knowledge is being thrust into the background by the aspect of science as the power of manipulating nature. It is because science gives us the power of manipulating nature that it has more social importance than art. Science as the pursuit of truth is the equal, but not the superior, of art. Science as a technique, though it may have little intrinsic value, has a practical importance to which art cannot aspire.

The true spirit of delight...is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

When I was a child . . . Only virtue was prized, virtue at the expense of intellect, health, happiness, and every mundane good.