Famous Quotes

Quotes by Bertrand Russell

• 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 poetry.
• The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
• There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
• There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.
• Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.
• Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.
• Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
• To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
• To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
• To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
• 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 do for those who study it.
• War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
• We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
• 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.