Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
— Bertrand Russell
The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.
The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.
Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.
Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.
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.
All movements go too far.
Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction.
The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.
Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.
Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.
Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.
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.
Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.
Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.
No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.
It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals.
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
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.
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.
