Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.

— Bertrand Russell

Continuity of purpose is one of the most essential ingredients of happiness in the long run and for most men this comes chiefly through their work.

— Bertrand Russell

Cynicism such as one finds very frequently among the most highly educated young men and women of the West results from the combination of comfort and powerlessness.

— Bertrand Russell

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

— Bertrand Russell

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

— Bertrand Russell

Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative a momentary cessation of unhappiness.

— Bertrand Russell

Education is not to be viewed as something like filling a vessel with water but, rather, assisting a flower to grow in its own way

— Bertrand Russell

Education should aim at destroying free will so that pupils thus schooled, will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished. . . . Influences of the home are obstructive; and in order to condition students, verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. . . . It is for future scientist to make these maxims precise and to discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.

— Bertrand Russell

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

— Bertrand Russell

Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.

— Bertrand Russell