Quotes by Bertrand Russell

“I believe four ingredients are necessary for happiness: health, warm personal relations, sufficient means to keep you from want, and successful work.”

“Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.”

“Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.”

“The key to happiness is accepting one unpleasant reality every day.”

“Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.”

“If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. [...] The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.”

“Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.”

“Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.”

“A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.”

“To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”

“The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”

“To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.”