Quotes from Bertrand Russell

A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation.

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

After so many lonely years, I know what life & love may be. Now, if I sleep, I shall sleep fulfilled.

All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.

Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men although he was twice married, it never occured to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.

Education, which was at first made universal in order that all might be able to read and write, has been found capable of serving quite other purposes. By instilling nonsense it unifies populations and generates collective enthusiasm.

Even in civilized mankind faint traces of monogamous instincts can be perceived.

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

Fear is, I believe, a most effective tool in destroying the soul of an individual--and the soul of a people.

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.

No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor, but honest.

Nothing of importance is ever achieved without discipline. I feel myself sometimes not wholly in sympathy with some modern educational theorists, because I think that they underestimate the part that discipline plays. But the discipline you have in your life should be one determined by your own desires and your own needs, not put upon you by society or authority.

Obscenity is what happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.

One of the signs of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.

Order, unity and continuity are human inventions just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.

Our instinctive emotions are those that we have inherited from a much more dangerous world, and contain, therefore, a larger portion of fear than they should.

Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position.

Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity.

The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.

The main thing needed to make men happy is intelligence.