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Bertrand Russell |
- Self - respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies, and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him.
- The secret of happiness is this: let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.
- The habit of looking into the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring for this a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts.
- If we were all given by magic the power to read each others thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.
- Continuity of purpose is one of the most essential ingredients of happiness in the long run, and for most men this comes chiefly through their work.
- Beggars do not envy millionaires, though of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful.
- The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.
- The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly, I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.
- To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
- What men want is not knowledge, but certainty.
- The average man's opinions are much less foolish that they would be if he thought for himself.
- No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest.
- Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a greet fear.
- Real life is to most men, a long second best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.
- A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation.
- It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit; divorced from it, they remain barren.
- Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.
- Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.
- Whenever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness, it is a sing of emotional failure.
- Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.
- Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
- Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half of the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
- Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
- No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
- One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is very important.
- We have two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and the other which we practice but seldom preach.
- All movements go too far.
- The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
- The fact that an opinion has been widely help is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
- The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
- 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.
- Mathematics possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture.
- To teach how to live with uncertainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy in our age can still do for those who study it.
- Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness.
- Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.
- There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
- ''Change'' is scientific; ''progress'' is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
- Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty.
- A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing anxiety.
- One must care about a world one will not see.
- Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are aways proud of the fact.
- One should respect public opinion in so far as it is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
- I do not believe that any peacock envies another peacock his tail, because every peacock is persuaded that his own tail is the finest in the world. The consequence of this is that peacocks are peaceable birds.
- To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
- Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
- Cynicism such as one finds very frequently among the most highly educated young men and women of the west, results from the combination of comfort and powerlessness.
- The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
- What hunger is in relation to food, zest is in relation to life?
- In all affairs, love, religion, politics or business, it's a healthy idea, now and then, to hang a question mark on things you have long taken for granted.
- Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where then can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable, and praised when they are not praiseworthy.
- It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.
- Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery.
- The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more astonishing becomes what human beings have achieved.
- 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.
- Unless a man has been taught what to do with success after getting it, the achievement of it must inevitable leave him a prey to boredom.
- To be able to use leisure intelligently will be the last product of an intelligent civilization.
- To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
- The central problem of out age is how to act decisively in the absence of certainty.
- If all out happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances, it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
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