Authors:

Bertrand Russell Quotes - Page 29

All Quotes Acceptance Achievement Adventure Affection Age Alcohol Anger Anxiety Art Atheism Atheist Attitude Authority Belief Birth Blasphemy Boredom Change Character Charity Children Choices Christ Christianity Church Common Sense Communism Community Compassion Competition Confidence Conflict Country Courage Creativity Curiosity Death Democracy Desire Devil Devotion Discipline Diversity Divorce Dogma Doubt Drinking Duty Earth Economics Education Effort Ego Energy Environment Envy Ethics Evidence Evil Excellence Exercise Failing Faith Fate Fear Feelings Fighting Finding Yourself Free Will Freedom Funny Genius Giving God Gossip Gratitude Greatness Greek Growth Happiness Happy Hate Hatred Heart Heaven Hell History Holiday Home Honesty Hope Human Nature Humanity Humility Husband Idealism Ignorance Imagination Impulse Injustice Innovation Insanity Inspiration Inspirational Integrity Intelligence Intuition Islam Joy Justice Kindness Knowledge Language Laughter Learning Liberty Life Literature Logic Loneliness Love Love Life Lying Madness Magic Mankind Marriage Math Mathematics Memories Morality Motivational Nature Observation Overcoming Pain Passion Past Peace Perfection Philosophy Plato Pleasure Politics Poverty Power Praise Prejudice Preparation Pride Progress Prosperity Psychology Punctuality Purpose Quality Reading Reality Regret Religion Respect Responsibility Satan School Science Science And Religion Security Simplicity Sin Skepticism Solitude Son Soul Spirituality Spring Struggle Study Stupidity Success Suffering Survival Teaching Terror Time Tolerance Tradition Travel Truth Understanding Victory Virtue Vision War Water Wife Wisdom Work Worry Worship Writing Youth
Joy of life... depends upon a certain spontaneity in regard to sex. Where sex is repressed, only work remains, and a gospel of work for work's sake never produced any work worth doing.

Joy of life... depends upon a certain spontaneity in regard to sex. Where sex is repressed, only work remains, and a gospel of work for work's sake never produced any work worth doing.

Bertrand Russell
Sex, Joy, Sake
Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.330, Routledge

Citizens as conceived by governments are persons who admire the status quo and are prepared to exert themselves for its preservation. Oddly enough, while all governments aim at producing men of this type to the exclusion of all other types, their heroes in the past are of exactly the sort that they aim at preventing in the present. Americans admire George Washington and Jefferson, but imprison those who share their political opinions.

Bertrand Russell
Hero, Men, Past
Bertrand Russell (2013). “Education and the Social Order”, p.11, Routledge

I suppose the advocates of unreason think that there is a better chance of profitably deceiving the populace if they keep it in a state of effervescence.

Bertrand Russell
Thinking, Chance, Deceiving
Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.425, Psychology Press

A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.

Bertrand Russell
People, Wish, Patient
Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 10

If throughout your life you abstain from murder, theft, fornication, perjury, blasphemy, and disrespect toward your parents, church, and your king, you are conventionally held to deserve moral admiration even if you have never done a single kind, generous or useful action. This very inadequate notion of virtue is an outcome of taboo morality, and has done untold harm.

Bertrand Russell
Kings, Parent, Disrespect
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Human Society in Ethics and Politics”, p.27, Routledge

The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection.

Bertrand Russell
Happiness, Art, Mean
Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.19, Routledge

I consider the official Catholic attitude on divorce, birth control, and censorship exceedingly dangerous to mankind.

Bertrand Russell
Attitude, Divorce, Catholic
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.34, Routledge

Morality in sexual relations, when it is free from superstition, consists essentially in respect for the other person, and unwillingness to use that person solely as a means of personal gratification, without regard to his or her desires.

Bertrand Russell
Mean, Desire, Use
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Marriage and Morals”, p.98, Routledge

The world that I should wish to see would be one freed from the virulence of group hostilities and capable of realizing that happiness for all is to be derived rather from co-operation than from strife. I should wish to see a world in which education aimed at mental freedom rather than imprisoning the minds of the young in rigid armor of dogma calculated to protect them through life against the shafts of impartial evidence.

Bertrand Russell
Mind, Wish, Armor
Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

So in everything: power lies with those who control finance, not with those who know the matter upon which the money is to be spent. Thus, the holders of power are, in general, ignorant and malevolent, and the less they exercise their power the better.

Bertrand Russell
Lying, Exercise, Ignorant
Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.153, Psychology Press

St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.

Bertrand Russell
Marriage, Views, Cake

No Carthaginian denied Moloch, because to do so would have required more courage that was required to face death in battle.

Bertrand Russell
Religion, Battle, Faces
Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.70, Routledge

There are two ways of avoiding fear: one is by persuading ourselves that we are immune from disaster, and the other is by the practice of sheer courage. The latter is difficult, and to everybody becomes impossible at a certain point. The former has therefore always been more popular. Primitive magic has the purpose of securing safety, either by injuring enemies, or by protecting oneself by talismans, spells, or incantations.

Bertrand Russell
Practice, Two, Safety
Bertrand Russell (1986). “Bertrand Russell on God and Religion”

The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.

Bertrand Russell
Work, Needs, World
Bertrand Russell (2015). “In Praise of Idleness”, p.7, Lulu Press, Inc

The best practical advice I can give to the present generation is to practice the virtue which the Christians call love.

Bertrand Russell
Love, Christian, Kindness

The first man who said "fire burns" was employing scientific method, at any rate if he had allowed himself to be burnt several times. This man had already passed through the two stages of observation and generalization. He had not, however, what scientific technique demands - a careful choice of significant facts on the one hand, and, on the other hand, various means of arriving at laws otherwise than my mere generalization.

Bertrand Russell
Mean, Science, Men
"The Scientific Outlook".

Formality Thus the absence of all mention of particular things or properties in logic or pure mathematics is a necessary result of the fact that this study is, as we say, "purely formal".

Bertrand Russell
Facts, Logic, Study

Philosophy arises from an unusually obstinate attempt to arrive at real knowledge. What passes for knowledge in ordinary life suffers from three defects: it is cocksure, vague and self-contradictory. The first step towards philosophy consists in becoming aware of these defects, not in order to rest content with a lazy scepticism, but in order to substitute an amended kind of knowledge which shall be tentative, precise and self-consistent.

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Real, Self
Bertrand Russell (2009). “An Outline of Philosophy”, p.2, Routledge

The question of "unreality"is a very important one. Misled by grammar, the great majority of those logicians who have dealt with this question have dealt with it on mistaken lines. They have regarded grammatical form as a surer guide in analysis than, in fact, it is. And they have not known what differences in grammatical form are important.

Bertrand Russell
Reality, Differences, Important
Bertrand Russell (1993). “Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy”, p.168, Courier Corporation

Protestants, from the first, have been distinguished from their opponents by what they do not believe; to throw over one more dogma is, therefore, merely to carry the movement one stage further. Moral fervor is the essence of the matter.

Bertrand Russell
Believe, Essence, Movement
Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.119, Simon and Schuster

I cannot favour laws such as that of Idaho, which allows sterilization of 'mental defectives, epileptics, habitual criminals, moral degenerates, and sex perverts.' The last two categories here are very vague . . . The law of Idaho would have justified the sterilization of Socrates, Plato, Julius Caesar, and St. Paul.

Bertrand Russell
Sex, Plato, Law
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.102, Routledge

There is in Aristotle an almost complete absence of what may be called benevolence or philanthropy. The sufferings of mankind . . . there is no evidence that they cause him unhappiness except when the sufferers happen to be his friends.

Bertrand Russell
Suffering, May, Causes
Bertrand Russell (2004). “History of Western Philosophy”, p.177, Routledge

Philosophy is an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously.

Bertrand Russell
Philosophy, Thinking, Ingenious
Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Peter Köllner (1996). “A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42”, p.336, Psychology Press

The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.

Bertrand Russell
Men, Views, Lasts
Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.123, Routledge

The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.

Bertrand Russell
Power, Thinking, Technique
Bertrand Russell (2013). “Human Society in Ethics and Politics”, p.164, Routledge

You May Also Like: