Quote

Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.

Bertrand Russell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Bertrand Russell
Age: 97 †
Born: 1872
Born: May 18
Died: 1970
Died: February 2
Analytic Philosopher
Autobiographer
Epistemologist
Essayist
Journalist
Logician
Mathematician
Metaphysician
Peace Activist
Philosopher
Tryleg
Bertrand Arthur William Russell
Russell
Bertrand Russell
3rd Earl Russell
Bertrand Russell
Earl Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell
3rd Earl Russell
Happiness
Human
Humans
Elegant
People
Disguise
Contempt
Hatred
Usually
Race

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

Image
Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Dread of disaster makes everybody act in the very way that increases the disaster. Psychologically the situation is analogous to that of people trampled to death when there is a panic in a theatre caused by a cry of `Fire!'.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The Stoic assures us that what is happening now will happen over and over again. [If so, Providende would] ultimately grow weary through despair.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.
Bertrand Russell
Image
In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.
Bertrand Russell
Image
It must not be supposed that the subjective elements are any less 'real' than the objective elements they are only less important... because they do not point to anything beyond ourselves.
Bertrand Russell
Image
It's not what you have lost, but what you have left that counts.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Measures of sterilization should, in my opinion, be very definitely confined to persons who are mentally defective
Bertrand Russell
Image
[Regarding] the convention that clergymen are more virtuous than other men. Any average selection of mankind, set apart and told that it excels the rest in virtue, must tend to sink below the average.
Bertrand Russell
Image
For some reason which I have failed to understand, many people like the system [scientific totalitarianism] when it is Russian but disliked the very same system when it was German. I am compelled to think that this is due to the power of labels these people like whatever is labelled ‘Left’ without examining whether the label has any justification.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Joy of life... depends upon a certain spontaneity in regard to sex. Where sex is repressed, only work remains, and a gospel of work for work's sake never produced any work worth doing.
Bertrand Russell
Image
If a law were passed giving six months to every writer of a first book, only the good ones would do it.
Bertrand Russell
Image
A priori Logical propositions are such as can be known a priori without study of the actual world.
Bertrand Russell
Image
On the one hand, philosophy is to keep us thinking about things that we may come to know, and on the other hand to keep us modestly aware of how much that seems like knowledge isn't knowledge
Bertrand Russell
Image
No satisfaction based upon self-deception is solid, and however unpleasant the truth may be, it is better to face it once and for all, to get used to it, and to proceed to build your life in accordance with it.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as a training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely utilitarian point of view as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Sir Arthur Eddington deduces religion from the fact that atoms do not obey the laws of mathematics. Sir James Jeans deduces it from the fact that they do.
Bertrand Russell
Image
One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told I have not noticed it.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Education, which was at first made universal in order that all might be able to read and write, has been found capable of serving quite other purposes. By instilling nonsense it unifies populations and generates collective enthusiasm.
Bertrand Russell