Bertrand Russell: Cytaty po angielsku (strona 27)

“When I was a child the atmosphere in the house was one of puritan piety and austerity. There were family prayers at eight o'clock every morning. Although there were eight servants, food was always of Spartan simplicity, and even what there was, if it was at all nice, was considered too good for children. For instance, if there was apple tart and rice pudding, I was only allowed the rice pudding. Cold baths all the year round were insisted upon, and I had to practice the piano from seven-thirty to eight every morning although the fires were not yet lit. My grandmother never allowed herself to sit in an armchair until the evening. Alcohol and tobacco were viewed with disfavor although stern convention compelled them to serve a little wine to guests. Only virtue was prized, virtue at the expense of intellect, health, happiness, and every mundane good.”

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Bertrand Russell

Źródło: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 9

“Just as we teach children to avoid being destroyed by motor cars if they can, so we should teach them to avoid being destroyed by cruel fanatics, and to this end we should seek to produce independence of mind, somewhat sceptical and wholly scientific, and to preserve, as far as possible, the instinctive joy of life that is natural to healthy children. This is the task of a liberal education: to give a sense of the value of things other than domination, to help create wise citizens of a free community, and through the combination of citizenship with liberty in individual creativeness to enable men to give to human life that splendour which some few have shown that it can achieve.”

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Bertrand Russell

Źródło: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 18: The Taming of Power

“The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilized men.”

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Bertrand Russell

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

“It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion – even many of which everybody approves – are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: "Some people think the earth is round, and others think it is flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion." Instead of this we say: "The earth is round."”

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Bertrand Russell

By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds.
Źródło: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 17: The Ethics of Power

“Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for the others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.”

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Bertrand Russell

Źródło: 1930s, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness

“It's not the experience that happens to you: it's what you do with the experience that happens to you.”

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Bertrand Russell

Attributed to Russell in Slaby's Sixty Ways to Make Stress Work for You (1987)
Attributed from posthumous publications

“There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.”

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Bertrand Russell

Źródło: 1930s, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays (1935), Ch. 2: 'Useless' Knowledge

“Most of us are not neutral in feeling, but, as human beings, we have to remember that, if the issues between East and West are to be decided in any manner that can give any possible satisfaction to anybody, whether Communist or anti-Communist, whether Asian or European or American, whether White or Black, then these issues must not be decided by war. We should wish this to be understood, both in the East and in the West.”

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Bertrand Russell

1950s, The Russell-Einstein Manifesto (1955)

“This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible and is something which no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate. I will not pretend to obey a government which is organising a mass massacre of mankind.”

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Bertrand Russell

Speech in Birmingham, England encouraging civil disobedience in support of nuclear disarmament (15 April 1961)
1960s

“Modern physics… reduces matter to a set of events which proceed outward from a centre. If there is something further in the centre itself, we cannot know about it, and it is irrelevant to physics.”

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Bertrand Russell

An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics (1927)
1920s

“The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.”

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Bertrand Russell

1900s, A Free Man's Worship (1903)

“The white population of the world will soon cease to increase. The Asiatic races will be longer, and the negroes still longer, before their birth rate falls sufficiently to make their numbers stable without help of war and pestilence…. Until that happens, the benefits aimed at by socialism can only be partially realized, and the less prolific races will have to defend themselves against the more prolific by methods which are disgusting even if they are necessary.”

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Bertrand Russell

1920s, The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (1923)

“There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire – poison and antidote.”

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Bertrand Russell

In Kenneth Harris Talking To: Bertrand Russell (1971)
Attributed from posthumous publications

“Government by majorities can be made less oppressive by devolution, by placing the decision of questions primarily affecting only a section of the community in the hands of that section, rather than of a Central Chamber. In this way, men are no longer forced to submit to decisions made in a hurry by people mostly ignorant of the matter in hand and not personally interested.”

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Bertrand Russell

Ch VIII: The World As It Could Be Made
1910s, Proposed Roads To Freedom (1918)

“We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.”

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Bertrand Russell

Źródło: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda

“A dog cannot relate his autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest but poor.”

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Bertrand Russell

Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), part II, chapter 1, p. 74
1940s

“Drunkenness is temporary suicide.”

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Bertrand Russell

1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

“The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.”

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Bertrand Russell

An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940), Introduction, p. 15
1940s

“Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind.”

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Bertrand Russell

Źródło: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 4: The Study of Mathematics

“Thank you for your letter and for the enclosure which I return herewith. I have been wondering whether there is any means of preventing the confusion between you and me, and I half-thought that we might write a joint letter to The Times in the following terms: Sir, To prevent the continuation of confusions which frequently occur, we beg to state that neither of us is the other. Do you think this would be a good plan?”

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Bertrand Russell

Letter to Lord Russell of Liverpool, February 18, 1959
1950s