Challenge to the Cold War (1985) Vol. 3, Ch. 14
Works
Hypatia
Dora RussellFamous Dora Russell Quotes
Source: The Tamarisk Tree (1975), Ch. XIV
As quoted in The Observer (30 January 1983)
"Who is Dora Black?" Equal Rights (5 June 1926)
Source: The Tamarisk Tree (1975), Ch. IX
“Humanity will ever seek but never attain perfection. Let us at least survive and go on trying.”
The Religion of the Machine Age (1983)
Dora Russell Quotes about children
Source: The Right to Be Happy (1927), Ch. V, p. 205
“We want better reasons for having children than not knowing how to prevent them.”
Hypatia (1925), Ch. 4
Context: We want better reasons for having children than not knowing how to prevent them. Nor should we represent motherhood as something so common and easy that everyone can go through it without harm or suffering and rear her children competently and well.
Dora Russell Quotes
Preface
The Right to Be Happy (1927)
Context: It has taken us centuries of thought and mockery to shake the medieval system; thought and mockery here and now are required to prevent the mechanists from building another. Without falling into a mystical vitalism that reverences organic nature as sacred, we can at least try rather to serve than to subdue the prancing seas of life. With this in view I have taken as impulses, instincts, or needs certain driving forces in the human species as we know it at present, and argued for such social and economic changes as will give them new, free, and varied expression. To take even this first step towards a happy society is a herculean task. After it has been accomplished, generations to come will see what the creature will do next. We none of us know; and we should be thoroughly on our guard against all those who pretend that they do.
Source: The Right to Be Happy (1927), Ch. V, p. 235
Context: Art that means anything in the life of a community must bear some relation to current interpretations of the mystery of the universe. Our rigid separation of the humanities and the sciences has temporarily left our art stranded or stammering and incoherent. Both art and science ought to be blended in our early education of our children's emotions and powers of observation, and that harmony carried forward in later education.
Preface
The Right to Be Happy (1927)
Context: It has taken us centuries of thought and mockery to shake the medieval system; thought and mockery here and now are required to prevent the mechanists from building another. Without falling into a mystical vitalism that reverences organic nature as sacred, we can at least try rather to serve than to subdue the prancing seas of life. With this in view I have taken as impulses, instincts, or needs certain driving forces in the human species as we know it at present, and argued for such social and economic changes as will give them new, free, and varied expression. To take even this first step towards a happy society is a herculean task. After it has been accomplished, generations to come will see what the creature will do next. We none of us know; and we should be thoroughly on our guard against all those who pretend that they do.
Source: The Right to Be Happy (1927), p. 241