Bertrand Russell

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this. ~ "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" in the collection, Unpopular Essays

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Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. ~ "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" (1950), p. 149.

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It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions make it impossible to earn a living. ~ Skeptical Essays (1928)

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My conclusion is that there is no reason to believe any of the dogmas of traditional theology and, further, that there is no reason to wish that they were true. Man, in so far as he is not subject to natural forces, is free to work out his own destiny. The responsibility is his, and so is the opportunity. ~ "Is There a God?" commissioned by, but never published in, Illustrated Magazine

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I mean by intellectual integrity the habit of deciding vexed questions in accordance with the evidence, or of leaving them undecided where the evidence is inconclusive. This virtue, though it is underestimated by almost all adherents of any system of dogma, is to my mind of the very greatest social importance and far more likely to benefit the world than Christianity or any other system of organized beliefs. ~ "Can Religion Cure Our Troubles?" (1954)

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So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others. ~ The Cassell Dictionary of Cynical Quotations

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One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it. ~ "Why I Am Not A Christian,"

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The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence 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. ~ "Christian Ethics" from Marriage and Morals (1950)

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If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing.

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Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan, the Fascisti. and Mr. Winston Churchill? Really I am not much impressed with the people who say: "Look at me: I am such a splendid product that there must have been design in the universe."

I am not very impressed by the splendor of those people. Therefore I think that this argument of design is really a very poor argument indeed. Moreover, if you accept the ordinary laws of science, you have to suppose that human life and life in general on this planet will die out in due course: it is merely a flash in the pan; it is a stage in the decay of the solar system; at a certain stage of decay you get the sort of conditions of temperature and so forth which are suitable to protoplasm, and there is life for a short time in the life of the whole solar system. You see in the moon the sort of thing to which the earth is tending — something dead, cold, and lifeless." ~ "Why I Am Not a Christian" (1927) in Bertrand Russell on God and Religion (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), p. 62.

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"I allowed myself to reflect that urban New York in 1940 was exactly at the same point on the road towards enlightenment as rural England in 1868." ~ Bertrand Russell, BBC interview, 1959

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Many more irreverent Bertrand Russell quotes here.