As quoted in Think, Vol. 27 (1961), p. 32
Disputed
Bertrand Russell:
562
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Bertrand Russell Quotes
No known source; also attributed to Susan Sarandon.[citation needed]
Disputed
Source: 1950s, Unpopular Essays (1950)
en.wikiquote.org - Bertrand Russell / Quotes / 1950s / Unpopular Essays (1950)
1960s
Source: Introduction to 1961 edition of Sceptical Essays (1961)
Context: The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder’s lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.
Variant: The secret of happiness is very simply this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile
Source: 1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
When asked "Does philosophy contribute to happiness?" (SHM 76), as quoted in The quotable Bertrand Russell (1993), p. 149
Attributed from posthumous publications
“To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”
1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
“The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.”
Attributed to Russell in Crainer's The Ultimate Book of Business Quotations (1997), p. 258
Attributed from posthumous publications
“Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know.”
1950s, Unpopular Essays (1950)
“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”
1920s, What I Believe (1925)
Source: Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Value
Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 13: Freedom in Society
Part I: Man and Nature, Ch. 1: Current Perplexities, pp. 4–5
1950s, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951)
Context: Consider MacArthur and his Republican supporters. So limited is his intelligence and his imagination that he is never puzzled for one moment. All we have to do is to go back to the days of the Opium War. After we have killed a sufficient number of millions of Chinese, the survivors among them will perceive our moral superiority and hail MacArthur as a saviour. But let us not be one-sided. Stalin, I should say, is equally simple- minded and equally out of date. He, too, believes that if his armies could occupy Britain and reduce us all to the economic level of Soviet peasants and the political level of convicts, we should hail him as a great deliverer and bless the day when we were freed from the shackles of democracy. One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.
Source: 1950s, Unpopular Essays (1950)
"Fear, the Foundation of Religion"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Context: Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hears can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.
“Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness.”
Source: The Conquest of Happiness
"The Emotional Factor"Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.
Often paraphrased as "The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world."
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Context: You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress of humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or even mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.
“How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?”
"Message from Bertrand Russell to the International Conference of Parlimentarians in Cairo, February 1970," reprinted in The New York Times (23 February 1970)
1960s
Context: The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was "given" by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East.
A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42 (1996), p. 544
Attributed from posthumous publications
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
“Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.”
1900s, "The Study of Mathematics" (November 1907)
Context: Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry. What is best in mathematics deserves not merely to be learnt as a task, but to be assimilated as a part of daily thought, and brought again and again before the mind with ever-renewed encouragement.
Source: The Conquest of Happiness
“Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.”
1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 8: Eastern and Western Ideals of Happiness
“Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.”
1940s, A History of Western Philosophy (1945)
“Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.”
Source: The Problems of Philosophy
"The Moral Problem"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Context: There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.
“Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.”
Source: The Conquest of Happiness
“Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.”
Attributed to Russell in Prochnow's Speakers Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms (1955), p. 132
Disputed
Justice in War-Time (1916), p. 70
1910s
