We can destroy animals more easily than they can destroy us; that is the only solid basis of our claim to superiority. We value art and science and literature, because these are things in which we excel. But whales might value spouting, and donkey might maintain that a good bray is more exquisite than the music of Bach. We cannot prove them wrong except by the exercise of arbitrary power. All ethical systems, in the last analysis, depend upon weapons of war.
en
Supériorité de l'espèce humaine basée sur le pouvoir arbitraire (1931-33)
Bertrand Russell citations célèbres
Histoire de mes idées philosophiques (1961)
“Une chose est ce qu’elle est, et pas autre chose.”
De l’Évèque Joseph Butler : Everything is what it is, and not another thing.
en
Autres publications
extrait de autobiographie
Principes de reconstruction sociale (1924)
Source: Principes de reconstruction social http://books.google.fr/books?id=V2sUmFK3LqwC&pg=PA1, Bertrand Russell, revue et corrigé par Normand Baillargeon , introduction.
Principes de reconstruction sociale (1924)
Bertrand Russell Citations
“Si nous n'avions pas peur de la mort, je ne crois pas que serait jamais née l'idée d'immortalité.”
Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Pourquoi je ne suis pas un chrétien (1957)
Principes de reconstruction sociale (1924)
Réponse de Bertrand Russell à Ludwig Wittgenstein, en 1921, alors qu’il se trouve à Pekin.
Correspondance
Histoire de mes idées philosophiques (1961)
Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and purification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.
en
La méthode scientifique en philosophie (1914)
In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays
Bertrand Russell: Citations en anglais
Letter to Alys Pearsall Smith (1894). Smith was a Quaker, thus the archaic use of "Thee" in this and other letters to her.
1890s
Letter to C. P. Sanger, 23 December, 1929
1920s
Source: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 15: Power and moral codes
Source: 1930s, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 7: The Case for Socialism
Source: 1930s, Education and the Social Order (1932), p. 133
BBC Radio Debate on the Existence of God, Russell vs. Copleston (1948)
1940s
'Vagueness' http://www.personal.kent.edu/~rmuhamma/Philosophy/RBwritings/vagueness.htm, first published in The Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy, 1 June, 1923
1920s
Source: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 12: Powers and forms of governments
"The Moral Arguments for Deity"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
“To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.”
Source: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 18: The Taming of Power
Source: 1950s, My Philosophical Development (1959), pp. 93-93
“Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business.”
Letter to Gilbert Murray, December 28, 1902
1900s
Part I, Ch. 3: Lenin, Trotsky and Gorky
1920s, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920)
Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 10: Recrudescence of Puritanism
Letter to W. W. Norton, 17 February, 1931
1930s
Source: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 9: Power over opinion
1950s, The Russell-Einstein Manifesto (1955)
1950s, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951)
Letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell in 1912, as quoted in Clark The life of Bertrand Russell (1976), p. 174
1910s
“The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich.”
Source: 1930s, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness
“[One] must look into hell before one has any right to speak of heaven.”
Letter to Colette O'Niel, October 23, 1916; published in The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Public Years, 1914-1970, p. 87
1910s
Letter to Walter Ulbricht, January 7, 1964. Russell would later write, in his autobiography: "The abduction and imprisonment by the East Germans of Brandt, who had survived Hitler's concentration camps, seemed to me so inhuman that I was obliged to return to the East German Government the Carl von Ossietzky medal which it had awarded me. I was impressed by the speed with which Brandt was soon released".
1960s
Source: 1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)
The argument is really no better than that.
"The First-cause Argument"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
"16 Questions on the Assassination" http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/The_critics/Russell/Sixteen_questions_Russell.html in The Minority of One, ed. M.S. Arnoni (1964-09-06), pp. 6-8
1960s
Enclosed reply to the Ministry of Labour, in defense of A. S. Neill (who declined to send it), 27 January, 1931
1930s
An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics (1927)
1920s
1920s, The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (1923)
"If We are to Survive this Dark Time", The New York Times Magazine (3 September 1950)
1950s