Bertrand Russell quotes for UPSC

We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practise, and another which we practise but seldom preach.

Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness is dead.

Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies, and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him.

No rules, however wise, are a substitute for affection and tact.

Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.

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

Whatever happens, I cannot be a silent witness to murder or torture. Anyone who is a partner in this is a despicable individual. I am sorry I cannot be moderate about it...

Political ideals must be based upon ideals for the individual life. The aim of politics should be to make the lives of individuals as good as possible.

Some part of life – perhaps the most important part – must be left to the spontaneous action of individual impulse, for where all is system there will be mental and spiritual death.

To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.

The merits of democracy are negative: it does not insure good government, but it prevents certain evils.

An individual may perceive a way of life, or a method of social organisation, by which more of the desires of mankind could be satisfied than under the existing method. If he perceives truly, and can persuade men to adopt his reform, he is justified. Without rebellion, mankind would stagnate, and injustice would be irremediable.

Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily life.

We need a science to save us from science.

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

The most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition. The experimental habit of mind is a difficult one for most people to maintain; indeed, the science of one generation has already become the tradition of the next...

In the welter of conflicting fanaticisms, one of the few unifying forces is scientific truthfulness, by which I mean the habit of basing our beliefs upon observations and inferences as impersonal, and as much divested of local and temperamental bias, as is possible for human beings.

Either Man will abolish war, or war will abolish Man.

Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.

The only thing that will redeem mankind is co-operation, and the first step towards co-operation lies in the hearts of individuals.

Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.

Fanaticism is the danger of the world, and always has been, and has done untold harm. I might almost say that I was fanatical against fanaticism.

No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.

To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man.

New truth is often uncomfortable, especially to the holders of power; nevertheless, amid the long record of cruelty and bigotry, it is the most important achievement of our intelligent but wayward species. '

I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.

Power may be defined as the production of intended effects.

What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.

Many of the actions by which men have become rich are far more harmful to the community than the obscure crimes of poor men, yet they go unpunished because they do not interfere with the existing order.

It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.

There are those who blame the Press, but in this I think they are mistaken. The Press is such as the public demands, and the public demands bad newspapers because it has been badly educated.

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

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

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

The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.

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.

A world full of happiness is not beyond human power to create; the obstacles imposed by inanimate nature are not insuperable. The real obstacles lie in the heart of man, and the cure for these is a firm hope, informed and fortified by thought.

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

Change is one thing, progress is another.

Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active.

No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is; no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.

We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think – in fact they do so.

The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.

The degree of one's emotion varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts – the less you know the hotter you get.

An irrational fear should never be simply let alone, but should be gradually overcome by familiarity with its fainter forms.

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.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

Love is better than hate, because it brings harmony instead of conflict into the desires of the persons concerned. Two people between whom there is love succeed or fail together, but when two people hate each other the success of either is the failure of the other.

One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.