Bertrand Russell quotes | Thousands Of Quotes

Search for quotes

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

Bertrand Russell

Fear

Instinct

Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Bertrand Russell

Patriotism

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

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

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

Bertrand Russell

Waiting

World

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Bertrand Russell

Knowledge

Pleasure

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.

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.

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.