Bertrand Russell Quotes
Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and political activist whose work is foundational to 20th-century analytic philosophy. With Alfred North Whitehead he co-authored Principia Mathematica, which sought to derive all of mathematics from logic, and his work on the theory of descriptions and logical atomism shaped much of analytic philosophy that followed. The quotes below are attributed to Bertrand Russell, organized by topic.
Browse Bertrand Russell by topic
Bertrand Russell on Death
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“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)
Bertrand Russell on Freedom
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“Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.”
1900s | Letter to Lucy Donnely, November 25, 1902 -
“One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.”
The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism(1920) | Part I, Ch. 9: International Policy -
“We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.”
Sceptical Essays(1928) | Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda
Bertrand Russell on God
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“I should like to believe my people's religion, which was just what I could wish, but alas, it is impossible. I have really no religion, for my God, being a spirit shown merely by reason to exist, his properties utterly unknown, is no help to my life. I have not the parson's comfortable doctrine that every good action has its reward, and every sin is forgiven. My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.”
Greek Exercises (1888), written two days after his sixteenth birthday. -
“I went to Salt Lake City and the Mormons tried to convert me, but when I found they forbade tea and tobacco I thought it was no religion for me.”
1920s | Letter to C. P. Sanger, 23 December, 1929
Bertrand Russell on Happiness
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“A life devoted to science is therefore a happy life, and its happiness is derived from the very best sources that are open to dwellers on this troubled and passionate planet.”
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays(1918) | Ch. 2: The Place of Science in a Liberal Education
Bertrand Russell on Justice
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“I am looking forward very much to getting back to Cambridge, and being able to say what I think and not to mean what I say: two things which at home are impossible. Cambridge is one of the few places where one can talk unlimited nonsense and generalities without anyone pulling one up or confronting one with them when one says just the opposite the next day.”
Letter to Alys Pearsall Smith (1893); published in The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, Volume 1: The Private Years (1884–1914), edited by Nicholas Griffin -
“Thee might observe incidentally that if the state paid for child-bearing it might and ought to require a medical certificate that the parents were such as to give a reasonable result of a healthy child – this would afford a very good inducement to some sort of care for the race, and gradually as public opinion became educated by the law, it might react on the law and make that more stringent, until one got to some state of things in which there would be a little genuine care for the race, instead of the present haphazard higgledy-piggledy ways.”
Letter to Alys Pearsall Smith (1894); published in The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, Volume 1: The Private Years (1884–1914) , edited by Nicholas Griffin. It should be noted that in his talk of "the race", he is referring to "the human race". Smith married Russell in December 1894; they divorced in 1921. -
“Arithmetic must be discovered in just the same sense in which Columbus discovered the West Indies, and we no more create numbers than he created the Indians.”
1900s | Principles of Mathematics (1903), p. 451
Bertrand Russell on Knowledge
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“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. -
“It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.”
Ch. 1: The Value of Scepticism -
“Science is what we know and philosophy is what we don't know.”
Unpopular Essays, 1950 -
“A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”
A History of Western Philosophy, 1945 -
“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinise it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it.”
Ch. VI: International relations, p. 97 -
“Greek Exercises (1888), written two days after his sixteenth birthday.”
I should like to believe my people's religion, which was just what I could wish, but alas, it is impossible. I have really no religion, for my God, being a spirit shown merely by reason to exist, his properties utterly unknown, is no help to my life. I have not the parson's comfortable doctrine that every good action has its reward, and every sin is forgiven. My whole religion is this: do every du -
“Thee will find out in time that I have a great love of professing vile sentiments, I don't know why, unless it springs from long efforts to avoid priggery.”
Letter to Alys Pearsall Smith (1894). Smith was a Quaker, thus the archaic use of "Thee" in this and other letters to her. -
“Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.”
Our Knowledge of the External World(1914) | p. 167 -
“The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilized men.”
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays(1918) | Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic -
“Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.”
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays(1918) | Ch. 5: Mathematics and the Metaphysicians -
“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) | "The Argument for the Remedying of Injustice" -
“If human nature were unchangeable, as ignorant people still suppose it to be, the situation would indeed be hopeless.”
Sceptical Essays(1928) | Ch. 17: Some Prospects: Cheerful and Otherwise -
“Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.”
Our Knowledge of the External World(1914) | Lecture I, Current Tendencies, p. 11 (New American Library edition, 1960)
Bertrand Russell on Life
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Attributed to Bertrand Russell:
“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.”
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“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”
What I Believe, 1925 -
“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); at the age of fifteen, Russell used to write down his reflections in this book, for fear that his people should find out what he was thinking. -
“It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.”
Sceptical Essays(1928) | Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda -
“Life seems to me essentially passion, conflict, rage... It is only intellect that keeps me sane; perhaps this makes me overvalue intellect against feeling.”
1910s | Letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell in 1912, as quoted in Clark The life of Bertrand Russell (1976), p. 174 -
“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.”
New Hopes for a Changing World(1951) | Part I: Man and Nature, Ch. 1: Current Perplexities, p. 10 -
“All's well that ends well; which is the epitaph I should put on my tombstone if I were the last man left alive.”
1900s | Letter to Lucy Donnely, April 22, 1906 -
“Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.”
A Free Man's Worship(1903)
Bertrand Russell on Love
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“To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.”
Marriage and Morals, 1929 -
“I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza 's God, it won't love us in return.”
1910s | Letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell, March, 1912, as quoted in Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2012), p. 1318
Bertrand Russell on Mind
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“Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so.”
Aphorism (commonly attributed) -
“Greek Exercises (1888); at the age of fifteen, Russell used to write down his reflections in this book, for fear that his people should find out what he was thinking.”
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. -
“I don't like the spirit of socialism – I think freedom is the basis of everything.”
1910s | Letter to Constance Malleson (Colette), September 29, 1916 -
“We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think – in fact they do so.”
1920s | The ABC of Relativity (1925), p. 166 Variant: "Most people would rather die than think; many do." -
“I do not think it possible to get anywhere if we start from scepticism. We must start from a broad acceptance of whatever seems to be knowledge and is not rejected for some specific reason.”
My Philosophical Development(1959) | p. 200 -
“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.”
1900s | Letter to Lucy Martin Donnely, July 6, 1902 -
“When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.”
1910s | Theory of Knowledge (1913)
Bertrand Russell on Nature
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“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Wikiquote
Bertrand Russell on Politics
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“The principal source of the harm done by the State is the fact that power is its chief end.”
1910s | Principles of Social Reconstruction (1917), Ch. II: The State
Bertrand Russell on Truth
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Attributed to Bertrand Russell:
“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty.”
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“Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.”
1910s | Justice in War-Time (1916), p. 27 -
“Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable.”
1960s | Fact and Fiction (1961), Part II, Ch. 10: "University Education", p. 153
Bertrand Russell on Virtue
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“Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.”
1930s | The New York Herald-Tribune Magazine (6 March 1938) -
“I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attach too much importance to the negative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little to the positive merit of enjoying their company.”
In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays(1935) | Ch. 12: Education and Discipline -
“No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.”
1910s | Justice in War-Time (1916), p. 70
Things actually not said by Bertrand Russell
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as Bertrand Russell but are in fact from someone else. Did Bertrand Russell say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
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Did Bertrand Russell say this? No.
“None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but the actual source is Marshal Lannes. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Attributed to Russell in M. Kumar Dictionary of Quotations , p. 76, but actually said by Marshal Lannes , according to The London Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences (1824), p. 664
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Did Bertrand Russell say this? No.
“If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: W. Somerset Maugham , A Writer's Notebook (1949), entry for 1901 | Sometimes misquoted as "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. | Sometimes misattributed to Anatole France | Note that Russell does say something similar in Marriage and Morals (1929): "The fact tha
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Did Bertrand Russell say this? No.
“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: From Marthe Troly-Curtin's Phrynette Married (1912). Misattributed to Bertrand Russell due to an ambiguous entry in Laurence J. Peter 's Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977)
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Did Bertrand Russell say this? No.
“The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Attributed to Reverend Theodore Hesburgh in Sol Gordon Let's Make Sex a Household Word: A Guide for Parents and Children (John Day Company, 1975), p. 79
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Did Bertrand Russell say this? No.
“If a "religion" is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Gödel taught us that mathematics is not only a religion, it is the only religion that can prove itself to be one.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: John D. Barrow , Between Inner and Outer Space: Essays on Science, Art and Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-192-88041-1 , Part 4, ch. 13: Why is the Universe Mathematical? (p. 88). Also found in Barrow's "The Mathematical Universe" (1989) and The Artful Universe Expanded (Oxford Uni
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Did Bertrand Russell say this? No.
“Not enough evidence God! Not enough evidence!”
As quoted in Wesley C. Salmon's "Religion and Science: A New Look at Hume's Dialogues," Philosophical Studies 33 (1978), p. 176. Also in the New York Times article So God's Really in the Details? (May 11, 2002) by Emily Eakin: "Asked what he would say if God appeared to him after his death and demanded to know why he had failed to believe, the British philosopher and staunch evidentialist Bertrand Russell replied that he would say, 'Not enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence.' The original source of this quote is an article by Leo Rosten published in Saturday Review/World (February 23, 1974) which features an interview with Bertrand Russell. There, Rosten writes : "Confronted with the… (Disputed.)
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Did Bertrand Russell say this? No.
“War does not determine who is right – only who is left.”
This has often been published as a quotation of Russell, when an author is given (e.g. in Quote Unquote – A HandBook of Quotation , 2005, p. 291), but without any sourced citations, and seems to have circulated as an anonymous proverb as early as 1932. (Disputed.)
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Did Bertrand Russell say this? No.
“In all affairs – love, religion, politics, or business – it's a healthy idea, now and then, to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”
As quoted in The Reader's Digest , Vol. 37 (1940), p. 90; no specific source given. (Disputed.)
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Did Bertrand Russell say this? No.
“Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.”
Attributed to Russell in Prochnow 's Speakers Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms (1955), p. 132 (Disputed.)
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Did Bertrand Russell say this? No.
“I believe in using words, not fists... I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.”
No known source; also attributed to Susan Sarandon . [ citation needed ] (Disputed.)
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Did Bertrand Russell say this? No.
“One must care about a world one will not see.”
Attributed to Russell in The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations (1997), p. 450, and in Robertson's Dictionary of Quotations (1998), p. 362, but no specific source is given. (Disputed.)
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Did Bertrand Russell say this? No.
“A new moral outlook is called for in which submission to the powers of nature is replaced by respect for what is best in man. It is where this respect is lacking that scientific technique is dangerous.”
Attributed to Russell at the end of Isaac Asimov 's short story Franchise with no specific source given. (Disputed.)