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I have come to realize that an early symptom of approaching mental illness is the belief that one's work is terribly important. If you consider your work very important you should take a day off.

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
Important
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Approaching
Realizing
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Terribly
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More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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The really useful education is that which follows the direction of the child's own instinctive interests, supplying knowledge for which it is seeking, not dry, detailed information wholly out of relation to its spontaneous desires.
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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.
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The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.
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No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.
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The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.
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To think I have spent my life on absolute muck.
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In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
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Common sense, however it tries, cannot avoid being surprised from time to time.
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I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.
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Patriotism which has the quality of intoxication is a danger not only to its native land but to the world, and My country never wrong is an even more dangerous maxim than My country, right or wrong.
Bertrand Russell
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Mankind is divided into two classes: those who, being artificial, praise nature, and those who, being natural, praise art.
Bertrand Russell
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Love, children, and work, are the great sources of fertilizing contact between the individual and the rest of the world.
Bertrand Russell
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Dread of disaster makes everybody act in the very way that increases the disaster.
Bertrand Russell
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It would now be technically possible to unify the world, abolish war and poverty altogether, if men desired their own happiness more than the misery of their enemies.
Bertrand Russell
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Science does not aim at establishing immutable truths and eternal dogmas its aim is to approach the truth by successive approximations, without claiming that at any stage final and complete accuracy has been achieved.
Bertrand Russell
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Upon hearing via Littlewood an exposition on the theory of relativity: To think I have spent my life on absolute muck.
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Philosophy bakes no bread
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Only in thought is man a God in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.
Bertrand Russell
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Our beliefs are, however, often contrary to fact.
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Protagoras did not know if the gods exist, but he held in any case they ought to be worshiped. Philosophy, according to him, had nothing edifying to teach, and for the survival of morals we must rely upon the thoughtlessness of the majority and their willingness to believe what they had been taught.
Bertrand Russell