1,551 Quotes by Bertrand Russell

Philosophy arises from an unusually obstinate attempt to arrive at real knowledge. What passes for knowledge in ordinary life suffers from three defects: it is cocksure, vague and self-contradictory. The first step towards philosophy consists in becoming aware of these defects, not in order to rest content with a lazy scepticism, but in order to substitute an amended kind of knowledge which shall be tentative, precise and self-consistent.

The essence of education is that it is a change effected in the organism to satisfy the operator.

We ought to look the world frankly in the face.

Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.

Frege has the merit of ... finding a third assertion by recognising the world of logic which is neither mental nor physical.

In the higher walks of politics the same sort of thing occurs. The statesman who has gradually concentrated all power within himself ... may have had anything but a public motive... The phrases which are customary on the platform and in the Party Press have gradually come to him to seem to express truths, and he mistakes the rhetoric of partisanship for a genuine analysis of motives... He retires from the world after the world has retired from him.

Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.

Psychology often becomes the disease of which it should be the cure.

The luxury to disparage freedom is the privilege of those who already possess it.