Bertrand Russell Quotes

People are so quick to judge and make decisions for themselves about situations they know absolutely nothing about.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

My childhood began, as everybody's childhood begins, with prejudices. Man finds prejudices beside his cradle, puts them from him a little in the course of his career, and often, alas! takes to them again in his old age.

Don't make an opinion on me if you don't know nothin' about me.

The mistake we make with many people is that we assume that we have the model. It is a type of condescension.

Nothing is more certain than that improvement in human affairs is wholly the work of the uncontented characters.

Nothing is too absurd to be believed of human prejudice.

I don't think people change; electronics change, the things we have change, but the way we live doesn't change.

People just assume, over the years, that soccer players are not too intelligent. As with most assumptions, they're wrong.

I've run into people who say, 'I know what you're like: You're a Boston guy.' That's so weird. This person who doesn't know anything about me thinks they know a lot because of the city I grew up in, which, to me, is a meaningless label. There are all kinds of people from Boston.

People still make all sorts of assumptions about me. I've just gone past the point of caring.

I'm not a massive reader of online comments but I come across the odd comment where people still question if I'm English. I find that so silly.

Assuming audiences to be dumb, that's a big fallacy.

I know what people think I am. People think I'm dumb. People think I party all the time. People think I'm ignorant.

I came from the NFL, so people didn't like that, or they just try to make assumptions, and I think when you assume, you look stupid.

I believe it's on everyone - men and women - to knock down stereotypes and outdated assumptions.

Everybody judges a book by its cover. I can look at 50 books and say every one of those books is bad. Then you read one, and you can say, 'This book is amazing.' That's the same with meeting people.

Never do human beings speculate more, or have more opinions, than about things which they do not understand.

Another Thing I'm Sick of Hearing: If I started that gay rights group, I must be gay. So if i start an animal rights group, what does that make me? A giraffe?

You're never going to get beyond other people's preconceptions of what you are and what you're about.

Stereotypes abound when there is distance. They are an invention, a pretense that one knows when the steps that would make real knowing possible cannot be taken or are not allowed.

Just because I'm happy doesn't mean I'm shallow.

People are naive about such things, and they would rather write them off as evil than attempt to understand them. An unfortunate truth, but a truth nonetheless.

If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people - a very few people, but a few novelists are among them - are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest in against such a search: organized religion, the state, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent.

It is quite normal to be racist, but it is criminal to remain one.