Bertrand Russell Quotes
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The State is a collection of officials, different for difference purposes, drawing comfortable incomes so long as the status quo is preserved. The only alteration they are likely to desire in the status quo is an increase of bureaucracy and the power of bureaucrats.
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Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.
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...it is possible to suppose that, if Russia is allowed to have peace, an amazing industrial development may take place, making Russia a rival of the United States.
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Change is one thing, progress is another.
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I resolved from the beginning of my quest that I would not be misled by sentiment and desire into beliefs for which there was no good evidence.
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Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.
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Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness is dead.
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The camera is as subjective as we are.
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We need a science to save us from science.
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I don't care for the applause one gets by saying what others are thinking; I want actually to change people's thoughts. Power over people's minds is the main personal desire of my life; and this sort of power is not acquired by saying popular things.
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The hopes which inspire communism are, in the main, as admirable as those instilled by the Sermon on the Mount, but they are held as fanatically and are as likely to do as much harm.
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Whatever we know without inference is mental.
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Love is better than hate, because it brings harmony instead of conflict into the desires of the persons concerned. Two people between whom there is love succeed or fail together, but when two people hate each other the success of either is the failure of the other.
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I don't like the spirit of socialism – I think freedom is the basis of everything.
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Science, ever since the time of the Arabs, has had two functions: (1) to enable us to know things, and (2) to enable us to do things.
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Among human beings, the subjection of women is much more complete at a certain level of civilization than it is among savages. And the subjection is always reinforced by morality.
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An individual may perceive a way of life, or a method of social organisation, by which more of the desires of mankind could be satisfied than under the existing method. If he perceives truly, and can persuade men to adopt his reform, he is justified. Without rebellion, mankind would stagnate, and injustice would be irremediable.
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No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.
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Life seems to me essentially passion, conflict, rage... It is only intellect that keeps me sane; perhaps this makes me overvalue intellect against feeling.
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It seems that sin is geographical. From this conclusion, it is only a small step to the further conclusion that the notion of 'sin' is illusory, and that the cruelty habitually practised in punishing it is unnecessary.
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I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.
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A physicist looks for causes; that does not necessarily imply that there are causes everywhere. A man may look for gold without assuming that there is gold everywhere; if he finds gold, well and good, if he doesn't he's had bad luck. The same is true when the physicists look for causes.
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The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich.
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We are speaking on this occasion, not as members of this or that nation, continent, or creed, but as human beings, members of the species Man, whose continued existence is in doubt.