BERTRAND RUSSELL 

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

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

 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. 

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

All movements go too far.

Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occured to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.  

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 paradise in a few years.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

 Lack of money is the root of all evil.

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.

Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.

 Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

Men do not understand books until they have had a certain amount of life, or at any rate no man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

 Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so.

My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter. [childhood diary]

No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.

 Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep-herding.

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.

The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of frendship or affection.

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.

The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

The time is you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.

There is no reason why the same man should like the same book at 18 and at 48.

There's an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere.

This is one of those views which are so absolutely absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them.

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession.

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