Quote

The man who is unhappy will, as a rule, adopt an unhappy creed, while the man who is happy will adopt a happy creed each may attribute his happiness or unhappiness to his beliefs, while the real causation is the other way round.

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
Real
Round
Causation
Way
Rounds
Attribute
Men
Unhappy
Creed
Rule
Adopt
Belief
Creeds
Happiness
Attributes
Happy
Unhappiness
May
Beliefs

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

Image
Happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines.
Bertrand Russell
Image
A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.
Bertrand Russell
Image
War...seems a mere madness, a collective insanity.
Bertrand Russell
Image
What Galileo and Newton were to the seventeenth century, Darwin was to the nineteenth.
Bertrand Russell
Image
A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.
Bertrand Russell
Image
I was told that The Chinese said they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic for an atheist.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.
Bertrand Russell
Image
A drop of water is not immortal it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution we should be inclined to be skeptical. In like manner we know that the brain is not immortal.
Bertrand Russell
Image
I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.
Bertrand Russell
Image
A physicist looks for causes that does not necessarily imply that there are causes everywhere. A man may look for gold without assuming that there is gold everywhere if he finds gold, well and good, if he doesn't he's had bad luck. The same is true when the physicists look for causes.
Bertrand Russell
Image
What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness is dead.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.
Bertrand Russell
Image
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
Image
Awareness of universals is called conceiving, and a universal of which we are aware is called a concept.
Bertrand Russell