Bertrand Russell

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life, which is impossible to the pure egoist.

I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.

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

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

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

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one.

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.

The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.

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.

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

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.

The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

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