Bertrand Russell

Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction. ”

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it. ”

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. ”

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine. ”

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know. ”

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. ”

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men. ”

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought. ”

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines. ”

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. ”