Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970,) fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, was a British philosopher, mathematician, logician, social critic, and peace activist. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of analytic philosophy, which is today the dominant philosophical tradition in the English-speaking world.

Russell was born in Trellech, Wales, into a prominent aristocratic family. His parents were radical thinkers, his father an atheist. After his parents died, Russell was raised by his grandparents in a strict Christian household. As a teenager, he kept a diary describing his doubts about God and his ideas about free will. He wrote his diary in Greek letters so his conservative family couldn’t read it.

Russell studied mathematics and philosophy at Cambridge and later returned as a fellow and lecturer. In Principia Mathematica (1910–13,) he and the British mathematician Alfred North Whitehead attempted to express all of mathematics in formal logic terms. Russell’s most significant and famous idea, the theory of descriptions, had profound consequences for his discipline. He further expounded logical atomism in Our Knowledge of the External World (1914) and neutral monism in The Analysis of Mind (1921.)

As one of the greatest public intellectuals of the 20th century, he was active in many social and political campaigns until his death. In reaction to World War I, he became a radical pacifist, incurring government fines, a dismissal from Cambridge, and finally, a six-month prison sentence. He supported women’s suffrage and advocated against nuclear weapons.

In 1944, Russell returned to England and was re-elected as a fellow of Trinity College-Cambridge. In 1950, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for “his many-sided and significant writings, in which he appeared as the champion of humanity and freedom of thought.”

Russell’s enduring works shaped the face of 20th-century British philosophy. He wrote several books aimed at the public, including the bestselling The History of Western Philosophy (1945.) His other notable works include Problems of Philosophy (1912) and Roads to Freedom (1918.)

Russell was a famous would-be-atheist and a confirmed agnostic—his agnosticism was reinforced by his recognition that the word “religion” does not have a definite meaning. His well-known lecture Why I Am Not A Christian (1927) remains, to this day, a definitive, nearly creedal, proclamation of his commitment to atheism. Russell described God’s existence as “a large and serious question.” He rejected some of the classical theistic arguments (the first cause argument, the design argument, and the moral argument) for lack of evidence.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Bertrand A. Russell

Emphatic and reiterated assertion, especially during childhood, produces in most people a belief so firm as to have a hold even over the unconscious.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Beliefs

Either man will abolish war, or war will abolish man.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: War

There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Government

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Happiness, Joy

One of the troubles about vanity is that it grows with what it feeds on. The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Vanity

The free intellect is the chief engine of human progress.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Progress

Unless a man has been taught what to do with success after getting it, the achievement of it must inevitably leave him a prey to boredom.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Success, Success is not everything, Boredom, Bores

This idea of weapons of mass exterminations utterly horrible and is something which no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate. I will not pretend to obey a government which is organizing a mass massacre of mankind.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Peace, Weapon

Education is…One of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Education

Envy is the basis of Democracy.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Welfare

Society cannot exist without law and order, and cannot advance except through vigorous innovators.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Law

To be able to concentrate for a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Focus, Concentration

The aggression committed by Israel must be condemned, not only because no state has the right to annexe foreign territory, but because every expansion is an experiment to discover how much more aggression the world will tolerate.
—Bertrand A. Russell

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Happiness

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Joy, Happiness

Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Insults, Swearing, Profanity, Vulgarity, Justice

Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Happiness, Hate

It is illegal in England to state in print that a wife can and should derive sexual pleasure from intercourse.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Sex

Some ‘advanced thinkers’ are of the opinion that anyone who differs from the conventional opinion must be in the right. This is a delusion; if it were not, truth would be easier to come by than it is.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Opinions

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Wisdom, Doubt, Foolishness, Activism, Fools

All the important human advances that we know of since historical times began have been due to individuals of whom the majority faced virulent public opposition.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Progress

Civilized life has altogether grown too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide a harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Hunting

To expect a personality to survive the disintegration of the brain is like expecting a cricket club to survive when all of its members are dead.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Soul

Folly is perennial and yet the human race has survived.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Foolishness, Fools

All forms of fear produce fatigue.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Fear

To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Conversation, Eloquence

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.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Assurance, Confidence

Anything you’re good at contributes to happiness.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Happiness

A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Illusion

There’s a Bible on the shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire-poison and antidote.
—Bertrand A. Russell
Topics: Bible

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