Bertrand Russell Quotes
-
How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?
→ -
One of the commonest things to do with savings is to lend them to some Government. In view of the fact that the bulk of the public expenditure of most civilized Governments consists in payment for past wars or preparation for future wars, the man who lends his money to a Government is in the same position as the bad men in Shakespeare who hire murderers. The net result of the man's economical habits is to increase the armed forces of the State to which he lends his savings. Obviously it would be better if he spent the money, even if he spent it in drink or gambling.
→ -
You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so called age of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burnt as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practised upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.
→ -
We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.
→ -
Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing what physics really asserts, since the words of everyday life are not sufficiently abstract. Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.
→ -
There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal as a human being to human beings; remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
→ -
It is obviously possible that what we call waking life may only be an unusual and persistent nightmare.
→ -
Science is no substitute for virtue; the heart is as necessary for a good life as the head.
→ -
Dread of disaster makes everybody act in the very way that increases the disaster.
→ -
There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.
→ -
Boys and young men acquire readily the moral sentiments of their social milieu, whatever these sentiments may be.
→ -
Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.
→ -
The secrets to happiness include enterprise, exploration of one's interests and the overcoming of obstacles.
→ -
The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.
→ -
What was exciting in the Victorian Age, would leave a man of franker epoch quite unmoved. The more prudes restrict the permissible degree of sexual appeal, the less is required to make such an appeal effective.
→ -
Modern technique has made it possible for leisure, within limits, to be not the prerogative of small privileged classes, but a right evenly distributed throughout the community. The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.
→ -
Without civic morality communities perish; without personal morality their survival has no value.
→ -
Some people would rather die than think.
→ -
Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions; do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.
→ -
The use of force stands in need of control by a public neutral authority, in the interests of liberty no less than of justice. Within a nation, this public authority will naturally be the state; in relations between nations, if the present anarchy is to cease, it will have to be some international parliament.
→ -
I believe that the abolition of private ownership of land and capital is a necessary step toward any world in which the nations are to live at peace with one another.
→ -
Drunkenness is temporary suicide.
→ -
When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.
→ -
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
→ -
In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.
→ -
We know that the exercise of virtue should be its own reward, and it seems to follow that the enduring of it on the part of the patient should be its own punishment.
→ -
Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God.
→ -
It is one of the defects of modern higher education that it has become too much a training in the acquisition of certain kinds of skill, and too little an enlargement of the mind and heart by an impartial survey of the world.
→ -
Cruel men believe in a cruel god and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly god, and they would be kindly in any case.
→ -
All forms of fear produce fatigue.
→
Related Authors
-
Russell Crowe Actor -
Rudolf Carnap Philosopher -
David Hume Philosopher -
G. H. Hardy Mathematician -
Friedrich Nietzsche Philologist -
Gottlob Frege Mathematician -
George Boole Mathematician -
Albert Einstein Theoretical Physicist -
Immanuel Kant Philosopher -
John Stuart Mill Philosopher -
Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosopher -
Karl Popper Philosopher -
Jean-Paul Sartre Philosopher -
Georg Cantor Mathematician -
Gottfried Leibniz Mathematician -
Rene Descartes Philosopher -
Noam Chomsky Linguist -
Alfred North Whitehead Mathematician -
George Edward Moore Philosopher -
Kurt Gödel Logician