More Quotes by Bertrand Russell
My first advice (on how not to grow old) would be to choose you ancestors carefully.
If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do.
The key to happiness is accepting one unpleasant reality every day.
Religion is based ... mainly upon fear ... fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.
To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
If we spent half an hour every day in silent immobility, I am convinced that we should conduct all our affairs, personal, national, and international, far more sanely than we do at present.
None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error.
The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.
Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.
