Following are some of my favourite quotes from the great Lord Bertrand Russell. He has always had a special place for me among rationalists, as it was a collection of his essays which helped me take the final steps to a rationalistic world-view twenty years ago.

“Religion is based . . . mainly upon fear . . . fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand . . . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.” (Lord Bertrand Russell)

“Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.” (Lord Bertrand Russell)

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth, more than ruin, more even than death . . . Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.” (Lord Bertrand Russell)

“The Christian view that all intercourse outside marriage is immoral was, as we see in the . . . passages from St. Paul, based upon the view that all sexual intercourse, even within marriage, is regrettable. A view of this sort, which goes against biological facts, can only be regarded by sane people as a morbid aberration. The fact that it is embedded in Christian ethics has made Christianity throughout its whole history a force tending towards mental disorders and unwholesome views of life.” (Lord Bertrand Russell)

“I wish to propose for the reader’s favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.” (Lord Bertrand Russell)

“Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.” (Lord Bertrand Russell)

“Although it is a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out, sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation.” (Lord Bertrand Russell)

“Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know, we become insensitive to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge, where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so, generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. ” (Lord Bertrand Russell)