Bertrand Russell Quotes

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

We seek true individuality and the true individuals. But we find them not. For lo, we mortals see what our poor eyes can see; and they, the true individuals, - they belong not to this world of our merely human sense and thought.

All things share the same breath - the beast, the tree, the man... the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.

All the principles of heaven and earth are living inside you. Life itself is truth, and this will never change. Everything in heaven and earth breathes. Breath is the thread that ties creation together.

Silence tells the seeker in us to love, to love himself. It tells us it is wrong to hate ourselves because of our imperfections. When the seeker loves himself, loves the Divine within himself, he eventually realises the Ultimate Truth.

Spirit itself is not human; it may spring up in any life... it may exist in all animals, and who know in how many undreamt-of beings, or in the midst of what worlds?

The values that reside in art are anarchic, they are every man's loves and hates and his momentary divine revelation.

The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?

Who in the Bible besides Jesus knew--knew--that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look?

Human reason is a pin dancing on the head of an angel, so small is it in comparison to the Divine vastness that encircles us.

In my grandparents' time, it was believed that spirits existed everywhere - in trees, rivers, insects, wells, anything. My generation does not believe this, but I like the idea that we should all treasure everything because spirits might exist there, and we should treasure everything because there is a kind of life to everything.

We neither know nor judge ourselves; others may judge, but cannot know us. God alone judges and knows us.

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You are Life passing through your body, passing through your mind, passing through your soul. Once you find that out, not with logic, not with the intellect, but because you can feel that Life-you find out that you are the force that makes the flowers open and close, that makes the hummingbird fly from flower to flower. You find out that you are in every tree, and you are in every animal, vegetable, and rock. You are that force that moves the wind and breathes through your body. The whole universe is a living being that is moved by that force, and that is what you are. You are Life.

At the profoundest depths in life, men talk not about God but with Him.

I've been feeling everything. From hate to love. From love to lust. From lust to truth. I guess that's how I know you.

Souls! When have you seen your own soul - that you're so certain you have one?

Only God knows hearts, and so only He can say, in truth, “I know how you feel.”

Remember, Lord, my ship is small and thy sea is so wide!

Man can live his truth, his deepest truth, but cannot speak it.

I believe that any single dream contains the essential message about our existence.

The profound unity of subjective existence and objective environment leads naturally to the idea that the life-force of one human being can affect other living beings and even the fundamental being of humankind as a whole. Furthermore, the minds of humankind fuse into one and exert a continuous influence, both physical and spiritual, on other living beings and on the whole of nature.

The virtue of the imagination is its reaching, by intuition and intensity, a more essential truth than is seen at the surface of things.

No infallible oracle out of the breast.

Show me what a man hates and I'll show you what he is.