bertrand russell quotes

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three
parts dead.
-- Bertrand Russell

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing.
-- Bertrand Russell

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have
been searching for evidence which could support this.
-- Bertrand Russell

"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will
fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines."
-- Bertrand Russell

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not
utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind,
a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
-- Bertrand Russell, in "Marriage and Morals", 1929

If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who
considered his work important.

-- Bertrand Russell

'Change' is scientific, 'progress' is ethical;
change is indubitable, whereas progress is a
matter of controversy.

-- Bertrand Russell

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not
utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind,
a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
-- Bertrand Russell, in "Marriage and Morals", 1929

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three
parts dead.
-- Bertrand Russell

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth but supreme beauty --
a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture, without appeal to any
part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trapping of painting or music,
yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the
greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense
of being more than man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is
to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.
-- Bertrand Russell

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near
the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people
to do so.
-- Bertrand Russell

Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know
what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
-- Bertrand Russell

Pure mathematics consists entirely of such asseverations as that, if
such and such a proposition is true of anything, then such and such
another proposition is true of that thing... It's essential not to discuss
whether the proposition is really true, and not to mention what the
anything is of which it is supposed to be true... If our hypothesis is
about anything and not about some one or more particular things,
then our deductions constitute mathematics. Thus mathematics may
be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking
about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
-- Bertrand Russell

"What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is
the exact opposite."
-- Bertrand Russell, _Sceptical_Essays_, 1928

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so
certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
-- Bertrand Russell

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in
praise of intelligence.

-- Bertrand Russell

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have
been searching for evidence which could support this.
-- Bertrand Russell

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out,
which is the exact opposite.
-- Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical Essays", 1928