Bertrand Russell

"The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them."

"A truer tale than any on the stage."

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."

"Impersonal non-attachment is the beginning of morality."

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."

"The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice."

"No one gossips about other people's secret virtues."

"Do not listen to those who preach despair and resignation."

"Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day."

"Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted."

"You should not speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people like us despise it."

"Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers are possible."

"There are infinite riches in a single grain of sand."

"The wise want love; the rich want respect; but the happy want nothing."

"In the part which we know there is so much misery that if the unknown were to contain nothing but joy, it would not be wise to pity ourselves or to feel regret."

"I believe in using words, not fists."

"It has been said, with much truth, that a savage is more acute than a civilized man."

"Machines will prove to be capable of doing everything that a man can do."

"We should endeavor to encourage the kind of courage that arises from cultivated feeling rather than from insensibility to the suffering involved in courageous acts."

"In the aftermath of world wars, peace is a difficult achievement."

"A man may desire to marry a woman from many motives, but rarely from a single unambiguous longing for monogamy."

"The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but it is an intellectual vice."

"Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more steady and more to be counted on than an intelligent man."

"That which is accepted as truth without examination is the enemy of progress."

"The good life requires the admirable things and a person who enjoys them is leading a good life."

"It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it to be true."

"Most of the things that people do are not really very interesting."

"Impulse without knowledge is always dangerous."

"I would never adopt any methods which would prevent the spread of tolerance and understanding."

"The evils we suffer from are largely self-inflicted."