Quotes by Bertrand Russell

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.

Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person nation or creed.

Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery.

A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked not be endured with patient resignation.

In all affairs love religion politics or business its a healthy idea now and then to hang a question mark on things you have long taken for granted.

Real life is to most men a long second best a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.

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.

To fear love is to fear life and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

The secret of happiness is this: Let your interests be as wide as possible and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

There was never any reason to believe in any innate superiority of the male except his superior muscle.

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.

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.

Beggars do not envy millionaires though of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

It is preoccupation with possession more than anything else that prevents men from living freely and nobly.

The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

Science is what you know philosophy is what you dont know.

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.

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.

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.