Bertrand Russell

Three passions have governed my life: The longings for love, the search for knowledge, And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind]. Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness. In the union of love I have seen In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of [people]. I have wished to know why the stars shine. Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens, But always pity brought me back to earth; Cries of pain reverberated in my heart Of children in famine, of victims tortured And of old people left helpless. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, And I too suffer. This has been my life; I found it worth living.  - Bertrand Russell

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. - Bertrand Russell

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. - Bertrand Russell

If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation will you prefer the grain to the vote? - Bertrand Russell

The Christian view that all intercourse outside marriage is immoral was, as we see in the above passages from St. Paul, based upon the view that all sexual intercourse, even within marriage, is regrettable. A view of this sort, which goes against biological facts, can only be regarded by sane people as a morbid aberration. The fact that it is embedded in Christian ethics has made Christianity throughout its whole history a force tending towards mental disorders and unwholesome views of life.  - Bertrand Russell

For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favorable and unfavorable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern; all alike, I should say, result from paucity of experience. - Bertrand Russell

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. - Bertrand Russell

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. - Bertrand Russell

I may have thought the road to a world of free and happy human beings shorter than it is proving to be, but I was not wrong in thinking that it is worth while to live with a view to bringing it nearer. - Bertrand Russell

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact. - Bertrand Russell

The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which we live.  - Bertrand Russell

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. - Bertrand Russell

Change is one thing, progress another. "Change" is scientific, "progress" is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy. - Bertrand Russell

When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also add that some things are more nearly certain than others. - Bertrand Russell, "Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: 'The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.' In these words he epitomized the history of the human race. - Bertrand Russell, Education and the Social Order

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.  - Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomis