“Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.”
"A Liberal Decalogue" http://www.panarchy.org/russell/decalogue.1951.html, from "The Best Answer to Fanaticism: Liberalism", New York Times Magazine (16/December/1951); later printed in The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1969), vol. 3: 1944-1967, pp. 71-2
1950s
Context: The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:
1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent that in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.
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Bertrand Russell 562
logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and politi… 1872–1970Related quotes
“A man searching for paradise lost can seem a fool to those who never sought the other world.”
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Stone of Farewell (1990), Chapter 9, “Cold and Curses” (p. 237).
“Our English economists have been living in a fool's paradise.”
Preface To The Second Edition, p. 27-28.
The Theory of Political Economy (1871)
Context: The conclusion to which I am ever more clearly coming is that the only hope of attaining a true system of economics is to fling aside, once and forever, the mazy and preposterous assumptions of the Ricardian school. Our English economists have been living in a fool's paradise. The truth is with the French school, and the sooner we recognize the fact, the better it will be for all the world, except perhaps the few writers who are far too committed to the old erroneous doctrines to allow for renunciation.
“Whatever the director asks me to do, I will do and make him happy. I’m a fool.”
As quoted in "Brigitte Lin: ‘In All My Movies, There Is Something of Myself’" in Film Doo (21 May 2018) https://www.fareastfilm.com/eng/archive/catalogue/2018/intervista-con-brigitte-lin/?IDLYT=31711
“A sensible woman can never be happy with a fool.”
#happiness
“Some fool or some trigger happy judicial finger.”
On the NIRC Judge Sir John Donaldson (Hansard, 7 May 1974, Col. 239)
1970s