Bertrand Russell Quotes

Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true.

There is a holy, mistaken zeal in politics, as well as in religion. By persuading others, we convince ourselves.

I believe that dogma is often evil.

It is in the uncomprisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma that the danger lies.

If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess commitment to some special or constricting idea.

The problem with absolutist beliefs that they can get you into traps in which the ends justify the means.

The first thing a principle does is kill somebody.

The Tea Party people are ideologues. They are right, and no one can change their minds. There is no reason for compromise.

I'm opposed to fundamentalism in any form.

Those who believe that they have absolute truth and the only moral system are destructive both to themselves and to those whom they try to convert.

I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.

The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.

There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.

I wish to propose for the reader's favorable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe in a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.

Almost any theory, even those espoused by self-proclaimed conservatives, can be held in an absolutistic way such that it poses a threat to institutional and political stability.

Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.

There is a holy mistaken zeal in politics as religion. By persuading others, we convince ourselves.

The fanatics should know that we hold our beliefs just as deeply as they hold theirs.

There is a segment of the right that doesn't care about winning, what I call zealotry masquerading as principle.

Truths turn into dogmas the moment they are disputed.

His major flaw may be that he is a prisoner of his own convictions…. He refuses to endorse laws with which he disagrees.

All political movements are like this — we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.

No one is more dangerous than someone who thinks he has "The Truth".

It is hard to oppose an ideology with a tradition.