Bertrand Russell Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes

“The good which it concerns us to remember is the good which it lies in our power to create—the good in our own lives and in our attitude towards the world.”

Russell shifts attention from uncontrollable cosmic outcomes toward forms of goodness that can still be created through one’s conduct and stance toward life.

Source note: Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, within Russell’s philosophical discussion of human value and the world. The line is preserved as ethical argument rather than converted into a promise that circumstances are controllable.

“Disinterested curiosity, which is the source of almost all intellectual effort, finds with astonished delight that science can unveil secrets which might well have seemed for ever undiscoverable.”

Curiosity can sustain difficult intellectual work because discovery itself becomes rewarding even when inquiry is not driven by immediate practical gain.

Source note: Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, essay “The Place of Science in a Liberal Education.” Project Gutenberg #25447. The surrounding passage describes the positive value of a scientific spirit.

“The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interests of the desire to know—it involves suppression of hopes and fears, loves and hates, and the whole subjective emotional life, until we become subdued to the material, able to see it frankly, without preconceptions, without bias, without any wish except to see it as it is, and without any belief that what it is must be determined by some relation, positive or negative, to what we should like it to be, or to what we can easily imagine it to be.”

Inquiry becomes more reliable when the wish to know is allowed to challenge hopes, fears and preferences that would otherwise predetermine the answer.

Source note: Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, “The Place of Science in a Liberal Education.” Russell continues by describing an attempt to see material frankly, without preconception or wishful bias.

“We do not want all men to be alike.”

Human development should not be forced into one standardized mold because individuality and creative difference are themselves goods worth protecting.

Source note: Political Ideals, early discussion of individual development. Russell immediately criticizes the bad teacher who imposes one opinion and produces pupils giving the same answer to doubtful questions.

“A certain kind of self-respect or native pride is necessary to a good life.”

Russell treats a durable sense of inward worth as necessary for living without surrendering completely to defeat, pressure or external judgment.

Source note: Political Ideals, discussion of what social institutions should make possible for individuals. Russell immediately connects self-respect with courage, hope and living by the best within oneself despite obstacles.

“The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.”

Russell ranks creative activity above possession, presenting a good life as one organized around making, developing and contributing rather than accumulating.

Source note: Political Ideals, opening chapter. Project Gutenberg #4776. The claim is part of Russell’s political philosophy about institutions that encourage creative rather than possessive impulses.

“The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty.”

Russell argues that uncertainty can be intellectually valuable because it loosens inherited assumptions and makes room for examined alternatives.

Source note: The Problems of Philosophy, Chapter XV, “The Value of Philosophy.” Project Gutenberg #5827. The sentence opens Russell’s concluding case for philosophy as an antidote to unexamined prejudice and dogmatic certainty.

“These questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation.”

Questions matter even without final answers because sustained inquiry expands intellectual possibility and weakens premature certainty about what can be true.

Source note: The Problems of Philosophy, final paragraph of Chapter XV. Russell is explaining why philosophical questions remain valuable even when definite answers cannot usually be established.

“The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason.”

Unexamined common sense can become a prison when inherited assumptions are accepted automatically instead of being tested by deliberate reasoning.

Source note: The Problems of Philosophy, Chapter XV. This is the opening clause of a longer sentence that also names habitual beliefs of one’s age or nation and convictions formed without deliberate reason.