Quotes · Skopia

26 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Place·Monmouthshire✕clear

What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?

1911

★ 6.9

Essay · Philosophical literature

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.

Bertrand Russell

On the Value of Scepticism · 1928

★ 5.2

There are seasons, in human affairs, of inward and outward revolution, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for. These are periods when... To dare is the highest wisdom.

William Ellery Channing

1829

★ 5.1

Philosophical literature

A dog cannot relate his autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest though poor.

Bertrand Russell

Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits · 1948

★ 4.5

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

Bertrand Russell

Marriage and Morals · 1929

★ 4.4

Essay · Philosophical literature

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.

Bertrand Russell

1928

★ 3.6

Essay · Philosophical literature

It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.

Bertrand Russell

1928

★ 3.6

Philosophical literature

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

Bertrand Russell

1930

★ 3.6

Essay · Magazine

The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich.

Bertrand Russell

1932

★ 3.6

Essay · Philosophical literature

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Bertrand Russell

1950

★ 3.6

Essay · Philosophical literature

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty.

Bertrand Russell

1950

★ 3.6

No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent.

William Ellery Channing

1838

★ 3.5

God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.

William Ellery Channing

1838

★ 3.5

Philosophical literature

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.

Bertrand Russell

1912

★ 3.5

Essay · Philosophical literature

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

Bertrand Russell

1928

★ 3.5

The psychology of adultery has been falsified by conventional morals, which assume, in monogamous countries, that attraction to one person cannot coexist with a serious affection for another. Everybody knows that this is untrue.

Bertrand Russell

Marriage and Morals · 1929

★ 3.5

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down.

1953

★ 3.5

Political literature

How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.

In Place of Fear · 1952

★ 3.4

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

Bertrand Russell

1928

★ 1.9

Essay · Magazine · Scientific literature

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.

Bertrand Russell

1907

★ 1.9

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