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If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

Bertrand Russell

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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
Life
Personal
Joy
Happiness
Bound
Success
Entirely
Difficult
Bounds
Change
Adversity
Give
Demand
Giving
Circumstances

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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It is not my prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.
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The three main extra-rational activities in modern life are religion, war, and love. all these are extra-rational, but love is not anti-rational, that is to say, a reasonable man may reasonably rejoice in its existence
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One of the most interesting and harmful delusions to which men and nations can be subjected is that of imagining themselves special instruments of the Divine Will.
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Why repeat the old errors, if there are so many new errors to commit?
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There was, I think, never any reason to believe in any innate superiority of the male, except his superior muscle.
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I say people who feel they must have a faith or religion in order to face life are showing a kind of cowardice, which in any other sphere would be considered contemptible. But when it is in the religious sphere it is thought admirable, and I cannot admire cowardice whatever sphere it is in.
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Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter second, telling other people to do so.
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One's work is never so bad as it appears on bad days, nor so good as it appears on good days.
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Happiness, as is evident, depends partly upon external circumstances and partly upon oneself.
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I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
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The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.
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The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.
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There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.
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The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.
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Science can teach us, and I think our hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supporters, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make the world a fit place to live.
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To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.
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Belief in a Divine mission is one of the many forms of certainty that have afflicted the human race.
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If a law were passed giving six months to every writer of a first book, only the good ones would do it.
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Our individual life is brief, and perhaps the whole life of mankind will be brief if measured in astronomical scale
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The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress.
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