Essays in Skepticism Quotes

“Sometimes, if pious men are to be believed, God’s mercies are curiously selective.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“It is a curious sensation to read the journalistic clichés which come to be fastened on past periods that one remembers, such as the “naughty nineties” and the “riotous twenties.” These decades did not seem, at the time, at all “naughty” or “riotous.” The habit of affixing easy labels is convenient to those who wish to seem clever without having to think, but it has very little relation to reality. The world is always changing, but not in the simple ways that such convenient clichés suggest.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“Agnostic.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“one should not regard anything that one accepts as quite certain, but only as probable in a greater or a less degree. Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“Obloquy is, to most men, more painful than death; that is one reason why, in times of collective excitement, so few men venture to dissent from the prevailing opinion.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“Under the influence of great fear, almost everybody becomes superstitious.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“Be very wary of opinions that flatter your self-esteem.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“Becoming aware of foreign customs, however, does not always have a beneficial effect. In the 17th Century, when the Manchus conquered China, it was the custom among the Chinese for the women to have small feet, and among the Manchus for the men to wear pigtails. Instead of each dropping their own foolish custom, they each adopted the foolish custom of the other, and the Chinese continued to wear pigtails until they shook off the domination of the Manchus in the revolution of 1911.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“Thinking that you know when in fact you don’t is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“If the matter is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation yourself.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action. Plato intended his Republic to be founded on a myth which he admitted to be absurd, but he was rightly confident that the populace could be induced to believe it.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“It is discouraging that many of the precepts whose sacred character is thus uncritically acknowledged should be such as to inflict much wholly unnecessary misery. If men’s kindly impulses were stronger, they would find some way of explaining that these precepts are not to be taken literally, any more than the command to “sell all that thou hast and give to the poor.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“Old-fashioned people still say “bless you” when one sneezes, but they have forgotten the reason for the custom. The reason was that people were thought to sneeze out their souls, and before their souls could get back lurking demons were apt to enter the un-souled body; but if any one said “God bless you,” the demons were frightened off.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“gloom is a useless emotion. In order to escape from it, I have been driven to study the past with more attention than I had formerly given to it, and have found, as Erasmus found, that folly is perennial and yet the human race has survived.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“The general aim of the democrat is to substitute government by general assent for government by force, but this requires a population that has undergone a certain kind of training. Given a nation divided into two nearly equal portions which hate each other and long to fly at each other’s throats, the portion which is just less than half will not submit tamely to the domination of the other portion, nor will the portion which is just more than half show, in the moment of victory, the kind of moderation which might heal the breach.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“as Shakespeare says: “What’s to come is still unsure.” Even the shrewdest men are apt to be wildly astray if they prophecy so much as 10 years ahead. Some people will consider this doctrine immoral, but after all it is the Gospel which says “take no thought for the morrow.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false. To know the truth is more difficult than most men suppose, and to act with ruthless determination in the belief that truth is the monopoly of their party is to invite disaster.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism

“the mediocre men will say if a really able man is allowed to rise as fast as his abilities deserve, and that is why there is a tendency to adopt the rule of seniority, which, since it has nothing to do with merit, does not give rise to the same envious discontent.”
― Bertrand Russell, Essays in Skepticism