Quotes from Bertrand Russell

I must say that I think all this doctrine, that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty. It is a doctrine that put cruelty into the world and gave the world generations of cruel torture; and the Christ of the Gospels, if you could take Him as His chroniclers represent Him, would certainly have to be considered partly responsible for that.

The essence of good manners consists in making it clear that one has no wish to hurt. When it is clearly necessary to hurt, it must be done in such a way as to make it evident that the necessity is felt to be regrettable.

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

Nothing can penetrate the loneliness of the human heart except the highest intensity of the sort of love the religious teachers have preached.

Among those who are rich enough to choose their way of life, the particular brand of unendurable boredom from which they suffer is due, paradoxical as this may seem, to their fear of boredom. In flying from the fructifying kind of boredom, they fall a prey to the other far worse kind. A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.

There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts.

The positive sum of pleasures in a modern man's life is undoubtedly greater than was to be found in more primitive communities, but the consciousness of what might be has increased even more.

Prudence versus passion is a conflict that runs through history. It is not a conflict in which we ought to side wholly with either party.

Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.

Will machines destroy emotions or will emotions destroy machines?

My advice to anyone who wishes to write is to know all the very best literature by heart, and ignore the rest as completely as possible.

Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable, and praised when they are not praiseworthy.

First: never use a long word if a short word will do. Second: if you want to make a statement with a great many qualifications, put some of the qualifications in separate sentences. Third: do not let the beginning of your sentence lead the reader to an expectation which is contradicted by the end.

To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralysed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.

Galileo and Kepler had dangerous thoughts (as they are called in Japan), and so have the most intelligent men of our own day.

To discuss endlessly what silly people mean when they say silly things may be amusing but can hardly be important.

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.

But although the world was happy, some savour had gone out of life, since safety had been preferred to adventure.

All disenchantment is to me a malady, which, it is true, certain circumstances may render inevitable, but which none the less, when it occurs, is to be cured as soon as possible, not to be regarded as a higher form of wisdom.

If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.

Nature and books and (later) mathematics saved me from complete despondency.

Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent.

A man cannot possibly be at peace with others until he has learned to be at peace with himself.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Neither love without knowledge, nor knowledge without love can produce a good life.