Bertrand Russell: Trending quotes (page 18)

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“I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social. Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give wisdom at more mundane times. Social: to see in imagination the society that is to be created, where individuals grow freely, and where hate and greed and envy die because there is nothing to nourish them. These things I believe, and the world, for all its horrors, has left me unshaken.”

Bertrand Russell

1960s, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1967-1969)

Wisdom , Hate , World , Beauty

“The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”

Bertrand Russell

Attributed to Reverend Theodore Hesburgh in Sol Gordon Let's Make Sex a Household Word: A Guide for Parents and Children (John Day Company, 1975), p. 79
Misattributed

Mother's Day , For Mother , For Father , Love

“People seem good while they are oppressed, but they only wish to become oppressors in their turn: life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.”

Bertrand Russell

Letter to Ottoline Morrell, 17 December, 1920
1920s

Life , People

“To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.”

Bertrand Russell

1930s, Mortals and Others (1931-35)

Wisdom , World , Understanding

“Change is one thing, progress is another.”

Bertrand Russell

1950s, Unpopular Essays (1950)

Change

“Some part of life – perhaps the most important part – must be left to the spontaneous action of individual impulse, for where all is system there will be mental and spiritual death.”

Bertrand Russell

1950s, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)

Life , Death , Parting

“When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.”

Bertrand Russell

Source: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic

Search

“In obedience to the feeling of reality, we shall insist that, in the analysis of propositions, nothing "unreal" is to be admitted. But, after all, if there is nothing unreal, how, it may be asked, could we admit anything unreal? The reply is that, in dealing with propositions, we are dealing in the first instance with symbols, and if we attribute significance to groups of symbols which have no significance, we shall fall into the error of admitting unrealities, in the only sense in which this is possible, namely, as objects described.”

Bertrand Russell

Source: 1910s, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), Ch. 16: Descriptions

Error , Feeling , Reality , Sense

“I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.”

Bertrand Russell

Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 1: The Value of Scepticism

Fear , Question , Appearance

“The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.”

Bertrand Russell

Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 8: Eastern and Western Ideals of Happiness

People , Pleasure

“The above proposition is occasionally useful.”

Bertrand Russell

Comment after the proof that 1+1=2, completed in Principia Mathematica, Volume II, 1st edition (1912), page 86 http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=umhistmath&cc=umhistmath&idno=aat3201.0002.001&frm=frameset&view=image&seq=126
1910s

“We later learned that all the nineteen passengers in the non-smoking compartment had been killed. When the plane had hit the water a hole had been made in the plane and the water had rushed in. I had told a friend at Oslo who was finding me a place that he must find me a place where I could smoke, remarking jocularly, 'If I cannot smoke, I shall die.”

Bertrand Russell

Unexpectedly, this turned out to be true.
1960s, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1967-1969)

Learning , Water

“Instinctively we divide mankind into friends and foes - friends, towards whom we have the morality of co-operation; foes, towards whom we have that of competition. But this division is constantly changing; at one moment a man hates his business competitor, at another, when both are threatened by Socialism or by an external enemy, he suddenly begins to view him as a brother. Always when we pass beyond the limits of the family it is the external enemy which supplies the cohesive force. In times of safety we can afford to hate our neighbour, but in times of danger we must love him.”

Bertrand Russell

Authority and the Individual (1949)
1940s

Love , Hate , Family , Business

“When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behaviour is a result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination.”

Bertrand Russell

"The Doctrine of Free Will"
1930s, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)

Way , Imagination , Birth , Thinking

“Acquisitiveness – the wish to possess as much as possible of goods, or the title to goods – is a motive which, I suppose, has its origin in a combination of fear with the desire for necessaries.”

Bertrand Russell

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)

Fear , Motivation

“Freedom in education has many aspects. There is first of all freedom to learn or not to learn. Then there is freedom as to what to learn. And in later education there is freedom of opinion.”

Bertrand Russell

Source: Sceptical Essays

Education , Freedom , Learning

“All serious innovation is only rendered possible by some accident
enabling unpopular persons to survive.”

Bertrand Russell book In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays

Source: In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays

Personality

“Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety.”

Bertrand Russell

Source: Sceptical Essays

Happiness