Bertrand Russell World Quotations

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.

To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.

Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?

There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.

How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?

Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it.

Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.

If you had the power to destroy the world, would you do so?

I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology... Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions are generated.

War can only be abolished by the establishment of a world government.

It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit; divorced from it, they remain barren.

Love is a little haven of refuge from the world.

The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident; but if it is the outcome of deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis.

You must believe that you can help bring about a better world.

Love, children, and work, are the great sources of fertilizing contact between the individual and the rest of the world.

Unrestricted nationalism is, in the long run, incompatible with world peace.

Mathematics is, I believe, the chief source of the belief in eternal and exact truth, as well as a sensible intelligible world.

Even if we could be certain that one of the world's religions were perfectly true, given the sheer number of conflicting faiths on offer, every believer should expect damnation purely as a matter of probability.

A priori Logical propositions are such as can be known a priori without study of the actual world.

The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty.

... the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be.

In our complex world, there cannot be fruitful initiative without government, but unfortunately there can be government without initiative.

If you question any candid person who is no longer young, he is very likely to tell you that, having tasted life in this world, he has no wish to begin again as a "new boy" in another.

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation ... it is common to wish well to oneself, but in our technically unified world, wishing well to oneself is sure to be futile unless it is combined with wishing well to others.

In a just world, there would be no possibility of 'charity'.

A world without delight and without affection is a world destitute of value.

Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully; after him, all have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat.

You could take up the line that some of the gnostics took up - a line which I often thought was a very plausible one - that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.

Fanaticism is the danger of the world, and always has been, and has done untold harm. I might almost say that I was fanatical against fanaticism.

The atomists , unlike Socrates , Plato , and Aristotle , sought to explain the world without introducing the notion of purpose or final cause.

One of the main causes of trouble in the world is dogmatic and fanatical belief in some doctrine for which there is no adequate evidence

I FIND IT SO DIFFICULT NOT TO HATE, WHEN I DO NOT HATE I FEEL WE FEW ARE SO LONELY IN THE WORLD

The saviors of the world, society's last hope.

I believe that the abolition of private ownership of land and capital is a necessary step toward any world in which the nations are to live at peace with one another.

Skilled work, of no matter what kind, is only done well by those who take a certain pleasure in it, quite apart from its utility, either to themselves in earning a living, or to the world through its outcome.

I do so hate to leave this world.

There seems scarcely any limit to what could be done in the way of producing a good world, if only men would use science wisely.

The great majority of men and women, in ordinary times, pass through life without ever contemplating or criticising, as a whole, either their own conditions or those of the world at large.

I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of WORK, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in the organised diminution of work.

We ought to look the world frankly in the face.

So far I have been speaking of theoretical science, which is an attempt to understand the world. Practical science, which is an attempt to change the world, has been important from the first, and has continually increased in importance, until it has almost ousted theoretical science from men's thoughts.

Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions; do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.

Intelligence, it might be said, has caused our troubles; but it is not unintelligence that will cure them. Only more and wiser intelligence can make a happier world

Science has made unrestricted national sovereignty incompatible with human survival. The only possibilities are now world government or death.

Half the useful work in the world consists of combating the harmful work.

It would have been very much better for the world if Britain had remained neutral and the Germans had won a quick victory. We should not have had either the Nazis or the Communists if that had happened.

No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is; no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.

To speak seriously: the standards of "goodness" which are generally recognized by public opinion are not those which are calculated to make the world a happier place. This is due to a variety of causes, of which the chief is tradition, and the next most powerful is the unjust power of dominant classes.

Moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modern world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda.

If everything has a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just be the world as God...

To the primitive mind, everything is either friendly or hostile; but experience has shown that friendliness and hostility are not the conceptions by which the world is to be understood.

Life and hope for the world are to be found only in the deeds of love.

I hold all knowledge that is concerned with things that actually exist - all that is commonly called Science - to be of very slight value compared to the knowledge which, like philosophy and mathematics, is concerned with ideal and eternal objects, and is freed from this miserable world which God has made.

You must believe that you can help bring about a better world. A good society is produced only by good individuals, just as truly as a majority in a presidential election is produced by the votes of single electors.

The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.

Our instinctive emotions are those that we have inherited from a much more dangerous world, and contain, therefore, a larger portion of fear than they should.

We are all prone to the malady of the introvert who with the manifold spectacle of the world spread out before him, turns away and gazes only upon the emptiness within.

Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, the chief glory of man.

To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.

Frege has the merit of ... finding a third assertion by recognising the world of logic which is neither mental nor physical.