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Bertrand Russell Quotes - Page 8

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In democratic countries, the most important private organizations are economic. Unlike secret societies, they are able to exercise their terrorism without illegality, since they do not threaten to kill their enemies,

In democratic countries, the most important private organizations are economic. Unlike secret societies, they are able to exercise their terrorism without illegality, since they do not threaten to kill their enemies, but only to starve them.

Bertrand Russell
Country, Exercise, Organization

It would now be technically possible to unify the world, abolish war and poverty altogether, if men desired their own happiness more than the misery of their enemies.

Bertrand Russell
War, Men, Enemy

Most political leaders acquire their position by causing large numbers of people to believe that these leaders are actuated by altruistic desires

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

A democrat need not believe that the majority will always reach a wise decision. He should however believe in the necessity of accepting the decision of the majority, be it wise or unwise, until such a time that the majority reaches another decision.

Bertrand Russell
Wise, Freedom, Believe

All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can only be refuted by science: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.

Bertrand Russell
People, Enemy, Suffering
"The Science to Save Us from Science". The New York Times Magazine, March 19, 1950.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

Bertrand Russell
Inspirational, Children, Pain
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Autobiography”, p.3, Routledge

To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.

Bertrand Russell
Happiness, People, Effort
Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.90, Lulu Press, Inc

If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.

Bertrand Russell
Men, Thinking, Years
Bertrand Russell (1935). “Religion and science”

Escape from boredom is one of the really powerful desires of almost all human beings.

Bertrand Russell
Powerful, Boredom, Desire
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.3, Routledge

My sad conviction is that people can only agree about what they're not really interested in.

Bertrand Russell
Agreement, People, Conviction

If we spent half an hour every day in silent immobility, I am convinced that we should conduct all our affairs, personal, national, and international, far more sanely than we do at present.

Bertrand Russell
Meditation, Half, Affair
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Mortals and Others”, p.35, Routledge

Men who allow their love of power to give them a distorted view of the world are to be found in every asylum: one man will think he is the Governor of the Bank of England, another will think he is the King, and yet another will think he is God. Highly similar delusions, if expressed by educated men in obscure language, lead to professorships of philosophy; and if expressed by emotional men in eloquent language, lead to dictatorships.

Bertrand Russell
Kings, Philosophy, Men
Bertrand Russell (2004). “Power: A New Social Analysis”, p.220, Routledge

When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since there is no criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but mutual hatred and an open or covert appeal to force.

Bertrand Russell
Men, Two, Issues
Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.198, Simon and Schuster

In the daily lives of most men and women, fear plays a greater part than hope: they are more filled with the thought of the possessions that others may take from them, than of the joy that they might create in their own lives and in the lives with which they come in contact. It is not so that life should be lived.

Bertrand Russell
Men, Play, Joy
Bertrand Russell (2015). “Proposed Roads to Freedom”, p.135, Booklassic

What hunger is in relation to food, zest is in relation to life.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Food, Zest
Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.91, Lulu Press, Inc

What makes a free thinker is not his beliefs, but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought, he finds a balance in their favor, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem.

Bertrand Russell
Balance, Atheism, Unhappy
Bertrand Russell (1944). “The Value of Free Thought: How to Become a Truth-seeker and Break the Chains of Mental Slavery”

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

Bertrand Russell
Death, Atheist, Religion
Bertrand Russell (2013). “Education and the Social Order”, p.73, Routledge

Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.

Bertrand Russell
Way, Found, Intensity
Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.455, Routledge

Dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the source of opinion; it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to unbelievers; it asks of its disciples that they should inhibit natural kindliness in favor of systematic hatred.

Bertrand Russell
Wisdom, Intelligent, Hatred
Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.403, Psychology Press

Aristotle, in spite of his reputation, is full of absurdities. He says that children should be conceived in the Winter, when the wind is in the North, and that if people marry too young the children will be female. He tells us that the blood of females is blacker than that of males; that the pig is the only animal liable to measles; that an elephant suffering from insomnia should have its shoulders rubbed with salt, olive-oil, and warm water; that women have fewer teeth than men, and so on. Nevertheless, he is considered by the great majority of philosophers a paragon of wisdom.

Bertrand Russell
Wisdom, Children, Winter
Bertrand Russell (1943). “An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish: A Hilarious Catalogue of Organized and Individual Stupidity”

But courage in fighting is by no means the only form, nor perhaps even the most important. There is courage in facing poverty, courage in facing derision, courage in facing the hostility of one's own herd. In these, the bravest soldiers are often lamentably deficient. And above all there is the courage to think calmly and rationally in the face of danger, and to control the impulse of panic fear or panic rage.

Bertrand Russell
Courage, Mean, Fighting
Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.364, Routledge

There is no difference between someone who eats too little and sees Heaven and someone who drinks too much and sees snakes.

Bertrand Russell
Snakes, Differences, Alcohol

Televison allows thousands of people to laugh at the same joke and still remain alone.

Bertrand Russell
People, Laughing, Internet

We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.

Bertrand Russell
Life, Spring, Creative
Bertrand Russell (2009). “Authority and the Individual”, p.38, Routledge

We need a science to save us from science.

Bertrand Russell
Needs
"High Points in the Work of the High Schools of New York City, Vol. 34". Book edited by Board of Education, p. 46, quoting "NY Times Magazine", 1952.

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