The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wise people so full of doubts.
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
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 infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.
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.
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines
Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.
Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
Bertrand Russel -
British philosopher, logician and polymath