“Civilized life has grown altogether too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting.”

— Bertrand Russell

1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)
Context: What is serious about excitement is that so many of its forms are destructive. It is destructive in those who cannot resist excess in alcohol or gambling. It is destructive when it takes the form of mob violence. And above all it is destructive when it leads to war. It is so deep a need that it will find harmful outlets of this kind unless innocent outlets are at hand. There are such innocent outlets at present in sport, and in politics so long as it is kept within constitutional bounds. But these are not sufficient, especially as the kind of politics that is most exciting is also the kind that does most harm. Civilized life has grown altogether too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Civilized life has grown altogether too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide harmless outlets for the impu…" by Bertrand Russell?

Bertrand Russell 562

logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and politi… 1872–1970

Related quotes

“If the young aspirant is not rich enough for Parliament, and is deterred by the basilisks or otherwise from entering on Law or Church, and cannot altogether reduce his human intellect to the beaverish condition, or satisfy himself with the prospect of making money,—what becomes of him in such case, which is naturally the case of very many, and ever of more? In such case there remains but one outlet for him, and notably enough that too is a talking one: the outlet of Literature, of trying to write Books.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)
Context: If the young aspirant is not rich enough for Parliament, and is deterred by the basilisks or otherwise from entering on Law or Church, and cannot altogether reduce his human intellect to the beaverish condition, or satisfy himself with the prospect of making money,—what becomes of him in such case, which is naturally the case of very many, and ever of more? In such case there remains but one outlet for him, and notably enough that too is a talking one: the outlet of Literature, of trying to write Books. Since, owing to preliminary basilisks, want of cash, or superiority to cash, he cannot mount aloft by eloquent talking, let him try it by dexterous eloquent writing. Here happily, having three fingers, and capital to buy a quire of paper, he can try it to all lengths and in spite of all mortals: in this career there is happily no public impediment that can turn him back; nothing but private starvation—which is itself a finis or kind of goal—can pretend to hinder a British man from prosecuting Literature to the very utmost, and wringing the final secret from her: "A talent is in thee; No talent is in thee." To the British subject who fancies genius may be lodged in him, this liberty remains; and truly it is, if well computed, almost the only one he has.

“It is no longer possible for lyric poetry to express the immensity of our experience. Life has grown too cumbersome, too complicated. We have acquired values which are best expressed in prose.”

Borís Pasternak (1890–1960) Russian writer

Interview in Writers at Work, Second Series (1963) edited by George Plimpton.

“Of all the outlets, the safest and most stable, both for products and for capital, is obviously that of a colony.”

Leopold II of Belgium (1835–1909) King of the Belgians

Quotes related to the Belgian Colonial Empire
Source: All the King's Men' A search for the colonial ideas of some advisers and "accomplices" of Leopold II (1853-1892). (Hannes Vanhauwaert), Preface:A historiographical picture of Leopold II (1835-1909) http://www.ethesis.net/leopold_II/leopold_II.htm#2.%20 STENGERS, J. “The place of Leopold II in the history of colonization.” The New Clio, I-II (1949-1950), 517.

“War has given applied psychology a tremendous impulse. This will, on the whole, do good, for psychology, which is the largest and last of the sciences, must not try to be too pure.”

G. Stanley Hall (1846–1924) American psychologist

G. Stanley Hall (1919); Cited in O'Donnell, John M. " The crisis of experimentalism in the 1920s: EG Boring and his uses of history http://www.chronicstrangers.com/history%20documents/Boring,%20Values,%20and%20History.pdf." American Psychologist 34.4 (1979). p. 290