“My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.”

—  Bertrand Russell

Greek Exercises (1888), written two days after his sixteenth birthday.
Youth
Context: I should like to believe my people's religion, which was just what I could wish, but alas, it is impossible. I have really no religion, for my God, being a spirit shown merely by reason to exist, his properties utterly unknown, is no help to my life. I have not the parson's comfortable doctrine that every good action has its reward, and every sin is forgiven. My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.

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Bertrand Russell 562
logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and politi… 1872–1970

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