Bertrand Russell Quotes

Destroy the seed of evil, or it will grow up to your ruin.

There is no such thing as a harmless truth.

After people have repeated a phrase a great number of times, they begin to realize it has meaning and may even be true.

As one may bring himself to believe almost anything he is inclined to believe, it makes all the difference whether we begin or end with the inquiry, 'What is truth?'

We're awash in toxic memes right now. One of the most toxic, I think because it enables so many others, is the idea that truth doesn't matter, that truth is just relative, that there's no such thing as establishing the truth of anything. Your truth, my truth, we're all entitled to our own truths. That's pernicious, it's attractive to many people, and it is used to exploit people in all sorts of nefarious ways. The truth really does matter.

It’s critical that we know what we believe, no matter what we feel...that we know what is true, no matter what we see.

How disturbing it is that our illusions are often our most important beliefs.

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.

One has to be realistic. One’s concern for equity and justice in the world must not carry one into the alien territory of unreasoned belief. That’s very important.

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies.

Reason! how many eyes hast thou to see evils, and how dim, nay, blind, thou art in preventing them.

A man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.

Why is it people who want the truth never believe it when they hear it?

Why can you believe the lie, but not the truth?

The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that how we talk about belief- how we fail to criticize or criticize the beliefs of others, has more importance to us personally, more consequence to us personally and to civilization than perhaps anything else that is in our power to influence.

I don't believe it is more important to move forward than to know the truth.

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.

In order to forgive reason for the evil it has wrought on the majority of men, we must imagine for ourselves what man would be without his reason. 'Tis a necessary evil.

You can't reason people out of beliefs they weren't reasoned into.

The truth is out there, but it’s often discomfiting and nuanced and hard to find, and not nearly as satisfying as believing whatever you want and mocking those who don’t.

Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices...rather than to root them out.

The human capacity for self-delusion is boundless, and the effects of belief are overpowering.

Doubting everything and believing everything are two equally convenient solutions that guard us from having to think

This little expression, 'It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're sincere,' is a monstrous lie.

But what if...what if you sincerely believed something was true, but you were dead wrong? What if you were so stubbornly sure that you were right, that you wouldn’t even consider the truth? Would the truth be silenced, or would it try to break through?