It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals.
- Bertrand Russell

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.
- Bertrand Russell

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
- Bertrand Russell

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

A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
- Bertrand Russell

Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.
- Bertrand Russell

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.
- Bertrand Russell

Too little liberty brings stagnation and too much brings chaos.
- Bertrand Russell

Anything you’re good at contributes to happiness.
- Bertrand Russell

Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country.
- Bertrand Russell

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.
- Bertrand Russell

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
- Bertrand Russell

Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
- Bertrand Russell

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

Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.
- Bertrand Russell

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.
- Bertrand Russell

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

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.
- Bertrand Russell

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.
- Bertrand Russell

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

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

Boredom is… a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
- Bertrand Russell

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

Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame.
- Bertrand Russell

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

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

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
- Bertrand Russell

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
- Bertrand Russell

Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
- Bertrand Russell

Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.
- Bertrand Russell

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
- Bertrand Russell

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.
- Bertrand Russell