I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite. -Bertrand Russell Happiness
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought. -Bertrand Russell Intelligence
In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards. -Bertrand Russell Men
Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic. -Bertrand Russell History
Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom. -Bertrand Russell Wisdom
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country. -Bertrand Russell War
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. -Bertrand Russell Knowledge
To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it. -Bertrand Russell Age
Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance. -Bertrand Russell Knowledge
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines. -Bertrand Russell Science
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. -Bertrand Russell Happiness
Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age. -Bertrand Russell Age
Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race. -Bertrand Russell Happiness
Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires. -Bertrand Russell Freedom
Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure. -Bertrand Russell Government
The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics. -Bertrand Russell Science