I do not myself think there is any superior rationality in being unhappy. The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.


Bertrand Russell

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BERTRAND RUSSELL
Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way
BERTRAND RUSSELL
What hunger is in relation to food, zest is in relation to life
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, pain of love lasts a lifetime.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life w...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The qualities most needed are charity and tolerance, not some form of fanatical faith such as is off...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
One should respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of p...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd;...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
An educator should think of a child as a garderner thinks of a plant, as something to be made to gro...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful, and valued because they confer power; they are ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Law in origin was merely a codification of the power of dominant groups, and did not aim at anything...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
To expect a personality to survive the disintegration of the brain is like expecting a cricket club ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
We are all prone to the malady of the introvert who, with the manifold spectacle of the world spread...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and a...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
[T]he infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they inven...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought o...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate gov...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape f...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can ...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying t...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface rela...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ide...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with o...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the i...
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.
BERTRAND RUSSELL