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“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.”

Bertrand Russell

Letter to Lucy Martin Donnely, July 6, 1902
1900s

“The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.”

Bertrand Russell

Source: 1910s, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), Ch. 7: Rational, Real and Complex Numbers

“In fact, contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.”

Bertrand Russell

Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 198

“In art [the Chinese] aim at being exquisite, and in life at being reasonable.”

Bertrand Russell

The Problem of China (1922), Ch. XI: Chinese and Western Civilization Contrasted
1920s

“Whatever bitterness and hate may be found in the movements which we are to examine, it is not bitterness or hate, but love, that is their mainspring. It is difficult not to hate those who torture the objects of our love. Though difficult, it is not impossible; but it requires a breadth of outlook and a comprehensiveness of understanding which are not easy to preserve amid a desperate contest. If ultimate wisdom has not always been preserved by Socialists and Anarchists, they have not differed in this from their opponents; and in the source of their inspiration they have shown themselves superior to those who acquiesce ignorantly or supinely in the injustices and oppressions by which the existing system is preserved.”

Bertrand Russell

Introduction, p. 10.
1910s, Proposed Roads To Freedom (1918)

“There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere.”

Bertrand Russell

Last Essay: "1967"
1960s

“Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.”

Bertrand Russell

Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 6: Machines and the Emotions

“Choose your parents wisely.”

Bertrand Russell

On the recipe for longevity; Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 29 (2012)
1950s

“William James used to preach the "will-to-believe." For my part, I should wish to preach the "will-to-doubt." None of our beliefs are quite true; all at least have a penumbra of vagueness and error. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.”

Bertrand Russell

Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda

“I dislike Communism because it is undemocratic, and capitalism because it favors exploitation.”

Bertrand Russell

Unarmed Victory (1963), p. 14
1960s

“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.”

Bertrand Russell

Authority and the Individual (1949)
1940s

“Americans need rest, but do not know it. I believe this to be a large part of the explanation of the crime wave in the United States.”

Bertrand Russell

Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 13: Freedom in Society.

“Children are made to learn bits of Shakespeare by heart, with the result that ever after they associate him with pedantic boredom. If they could meet him in the flesh, full of jollity and ale, they would be astonished, and if they had never heard of him before they might be led by his jollity to see what he had written. But if at school they had been inoculated against him, they will never be able to enjoy him. The same sort of thing applies to music lessons. Human beings have certain capacities for spontaneous enjoyment, but moralists and pedants possess themselves of the apparatus of these enjoyments, and having extracted what they consider the poison of pleasure they leave them dreary and dismal and devoid of everything that gives them value. Shakespeare did not write with a view to boring school-children; he wrote with a view to delighting his audiences. If he does not give you delight, you had better ignore him.”

Bertrand Russell

Part III: Man and Himself, Ch. 20: The Happy Man, p. 201
1950s, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951)

“The world is full of conflicts; and, overshadowing all minor conflicts, the titanic struggle between Communism and anti-Communism.
Almost everybody who is politically conscious has strong feelings about one or more of these issues; but we want you, if you can, to set aside such feelings and consider yourselves only as members of a biological species which has had a remarkable history, and whose disappearance none of us can desire.
We shall try to say no single word which should appeal to one group rather than to another. All, equally, are in peril, and, if the peril is understood, there is hope that they may collectively avert it.”

Bertrand Russell

1950s, The Russell-Einstein Manifesto (1955)

“For want of the apparatus of propositional functions, many logicians have been driven to the conclusion that there are unreal objects. It is argued, e. g., by Meinong, that we can speak about "the golden mountain," "the round square," and so on; we can make true propositions of which these are the subjects; hence they must have some kind of logical being, since otherwise the propositions in which they occur would be meaningless. In such theories, it seems to me, there is a failure of that feeling for reality which ought to be preserved even in the most abstract studies. Logic, I should maintain, must no more admit a unicorn than zoology can; for logic is concerned with the real world just as truly as zoology, though with its more abstract and general features.”

Bertrand Russell

Source: 1910s, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), Ch. 16: Descriptions

“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.”

Bertrand Russell

Letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell, March, 1912, as quoted in Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2012), p. 1318
1910s

“Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.”

Bertrand Russell

Source: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic

“It seems to me now that mathematics is capable of an artistic excellence as great as that of any music, perhaps greater; not because the pleasure it gives (although very pure) is comparable, either in intensity or in the number of people who feel it, to that of music, but because it gives in absolute perfection that combination, characteristic of great art, of godlike freedom, with the sense of inevitable destiny; because, in fact, it constructs an ideal world where everything is perfect and yet true.”

Bertrand Russell

Letter to Gilbert Murray, April 3, 1902
1900s

“As geological time goes, it is but a moment since the human race began and only the twinkling of an eye since the arts of civilization were first invented. In spite of some alarmists, it is hardly likely that our species will completely exterminate itself. And so long as man continues to exist, we may be pretty sure that, whatever he may suffer for a time, and whatever brightness may be eclipsed, he will emerge sooner or later, perhaps strengthened and reinvigorated by a period of mental sleep. The universe is vast and men are but tiny specks on an insignificant planet. But the more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more astonishing becomes what human beings have achieved.”

Bertrand Russell

"If We are to Survive this Dark Time", The New York Times Magazine (3 September 1950)
1950s

“To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.”

Bertrand Russell

1920s, The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (1923)