Bertrand Russell Quotes on God
Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and political activist whose work is foundational to 20th-century analytic philosophy. This page collects quotes attributed to Bertrand Russell on the topic of god, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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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. -
“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 -
“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 -
“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