Bertrand Russell Quotes

Freedom was conditioned by man's physical body, heredity, and environment.

I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that fate and character are the same conception.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

Happiness lies so far from man, but he must begin by daring to will it.

I see man more as an instrument or an agent more than anything else.

Character and fate are two words for the same thing.

I think there's great potential for autonomy, but we have to remember that we live in a world where people may have free will but have not invented their circumstances.

Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything except his own nature.

It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.

I hate to think life is just facts and laws.

Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.

Ambition is not what man does... but what man would do.

Sooner or later we've all got to confront the reality that we have got to come to understand who we are and what we're doing, and the extent to which we are guided or manipulated by forces that are beyond our control.

The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea.

Everyone needs a fantasy.

The questions of philosophy proper are human desires and fears and aspirations - human emotions - taking an intellectual form.

We have to believe in free will. We’ve got no choice.

.d ambition;, .d Spain;, .d human nature;, Ambition is bondage.

Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out of such as he finds close at hand.

A great man’s actions are determined, if not foreordained, by his character.

It's insanely difficult for people to accept the extent to which we are biological organisms without agency.

Desire has no history.

If we didn't want anything, we would never get anything, good or bad. I think our longings are natural, and if we act as nature prompts us we can't go far wrong.

Dream and love are just words - until you decide to experience them

Very few live by choice. Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not always willingly cooperate; and therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his own.