424 quotes
All's well that ends well; which is the epitaph I should put on my tombstone if I were the last man left alive.
To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.
The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (1923)
I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.
Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
Unpopular Essays (1950)
Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.
What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)
If there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence.
Bertrand Russell's Best (1958)
We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practise, and another which we practise but seldom preach.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
I resolved from the beginning of my quest that I would not be misled by sentiment and desire into beliefs for which there was no good evidence.
Fact and Fiction (1961)
A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something that he can understand.
A History of Western Philosophy (1945)
Mathematics takes us still further from what is human, into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the world, but every possible world, must conform.
The Study of Mathematics (1907)
What a monstrous thing that a University should teach journalism! I thought that was only done at Oxford. This respect for the filthy multitude is ruining civilisation.
The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.
A Free Man's Worship (1903)
In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.
Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
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.
Unpopular Essays (1950)
There is a very great deal to be said for the Anarchist plan of allowing necessaries, and all commodities that can easily be produced in quantities adequate to any possible demand, to be given away freely to all who ask for them, in any amounts they may require.
Proposed Roads To Freedom (1918)
I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness.
Greek Exercises (1888)
It must not be supposed that the subjective elements are any less 'real' than the objective elements; they are only less important... because they do not point to anything beyond ourselves...
An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics (1927)
The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists in the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself.
Principles of Mathematics (1903)
To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.
The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918)
The old often envy the young; when they do, they are apt to treat them cruelly.
What I Believe (1925)