Bertrand Russell Quotes About Human Nature

• One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.

  Bertrand Russell

  Success, Work, Stress

  Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 5

• Human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those who seem least to demand it.

  Bertrand Russell

  Emotional, Giving, Feelings

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.101, Lulu Press, Inc

• I hate the world and almost all the people in it. I hate the Labour Congress and the journalists who send men to be slaughtered, and the fathers who feel a smug pride when their sons are killed, and even the pacifists who keep saying human nature is essentially good, in spite of all the daily proofs to the contrary. I hate the planet and the human race—I am ashamed to belong to such a species.

  Bertrand Russell

  Father, Hate, Pride

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Autobiography”, p.289, Routledge

• If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

  Bertrand Russell

  Change, Happiness, Success

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.90, Lulu Press, Inc

• War grows out of ordinary human nature.

  Bertrand Russell

  War, Ordinary, Human Nature

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Why Men Fight: A Method of Abolishing the International Duel”, p.5, Lulu Press, Inc

• Understanding human nature must be the basis of any real improvement in human life. Science has done wonders in mastering the laws of the physical world, but our own nature is much less understood, as yet, than the nature of stars and electrons. When science learns to understand human nature, it will be able to bring a happiness into our lives which machines and the physical sciences have failed to create.

  Bertrand Russell

  Stars, Real, Law

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.70, Psychology Press

• Human nature being what it is, people will insist upon getting some pleasure out of life.

  Bertrand Russell

  People, Human Nature, Pleasure

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.106, Psychology Press

• The dictum that human nature cannot be changed is one of those tiresome platitudes that conceal from the ignorant the depths of their own ignorance.

  Bertrand Russell

  Ignorance, Ignorant, Depth

• A religious creed differs from a scientific theory in claiming to embody eternal and absolutely certain truth, whereas science is always tentative, expecting that modification in its present theories will sooner or later be found necessary, and aware that its method is one which is logically incapable of arriving at a complete and final demonstration.

  Bertrand Russell

  Religious, Adventure, Arriving

  "Religion and Science". Book by Bertrand Russell, Ch. I: Ground of Conflict, 1935.

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