Bertrand Russell

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 place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one – particularly if he plays golf, which he usually does.

To think I have spent my life on absolute muck.

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.

The more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs.

The influence of our wishes upon our beliefs is a matter of common knowledge and observation, yet the nature of this influence is very generally misconceived... the great mass of beliefs by which we are supported in our daily life is merely the bodying forth of desire, corrected here and there, at isolated points, by the rude shock of facts. Man is essentially a dreamer...

The modern power of the State began in the late fifteenth century and began as a result of gunpowder.

Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.

The opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity…

If a majority in every civilized country so desired, we could, within twenty years, abolish all abject poverty, quite half the illness in the world, the whole economic slavery which binds down nine tenths of our population; we could fill the world with beauty and joy, and secure the reign of universal peace. It is only because men are apathetic that this is not achieved...

A good social system is not to be secured by making people unselfish, but, by making their own vital impulses fit in with other peoples.

Those who have produced stoic philosophies have all had enough to eat and drink.

I feel I shall find the truth on my deathbed and be surrounded by people too stupid to understand—fussing about medicines instead of searching for wisdom.

I hate being all tidy like a book in a library where nobody reads – prison is horribly like that.

Free thought has always been a perquisite of aristocracy.

Nothing can penetrate the loneliness of the human heart except the highest intensity of the sort of love the religious teachers have preached.

Among those who are rich enough to choose their way of life, the particular brand of unendurable boredom from which they suffer is due, paradoxical as this may seem, to their fear of boredom.

In many women, especially rich Society women, the capacity for feeling love is completely dried up, and is replaced by a powerful desire that all men should love them.

One eminently orthodox Catholic divine laid it down that a confessor may fondle a nun's breasts, provided he does it without evil intent. But I doubt whether modern authorities would agree with him on this point.