Quote

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.

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
Feels
Faces
Cowardice
Kind
Religion
Spheres
Would
Faith
Showing
Life
Order
Considered
People
Cannot
Admire
Thought
Religious
Contemptible
Feel
Face
Admirable
Must
Whatever
Sphere

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

Image
Clergymen almost necessarily fail in two ways as teachers of morals. They condemn acts which do no harm and they condone acts which do great harm.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Neither the Church nor modern public opinion condemns petting, provided it stops short at a certain point.
Bertrand Russell
Image
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know.
Bertrand Russell
Image
A man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if indeed such a man exists.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Envy ... is one form of a vice, partly moral, partly intellectual, which consists in seeing things never in themselves but only in their relations.
Bertrand Russell
Image
All movements go too far.
Bertrand Russell
Image
There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Half the useful work in the world consists of combating the harmful work.
Bertrand Russell
Image
When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau.
Bertrand Russell
Image
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.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.
Bertrand Russell
Image
All the important human advances that we know of since historical times began have been due to individuals of whom the majority faced virulent public opposition.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.
Bertrand Russell
Image
I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Christ . . . said that a man who had looked after a woman lustfully had sinned as much as the man who had seduced her. How absurd!
Bertrand Russell
Image
The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
Bertrand Russell
Image
There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.
Bertrand Russell