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Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish
Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, Philosophical Essays
Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, Sceptical Essays
Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, Unpopular Essays
Boredom is ... a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, The Conquest of Happiness
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver ... in the end, the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, What I Believe
Marriage is for woman the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, Marriage and Morals
Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, Marriage and Morals
Mathematics possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty -- a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, Mysticism and Logic
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good ground for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish," Unpopular Essays
The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind
After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution progressed to the point at which it generated Neros, Genghis Khans, and Hitlers. This, however, is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, Unpopular Essays
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.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, A History of Western Philosophy
The most savage controversies are about those matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish
To realize the unimportance of time is the gate to wisdom.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, Mysticism and Logic
The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, Conquest of Happiness
There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, The Analysis of Mind
No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, Justice in War-Time
As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish
If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.
BERTRAND RUSSELL, Autobiography
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