Bertrand Russell quotes - page 24

Without civic morality communities perish without personal morality their survival has no value. (Bertrand Russell)
What vanity needs for its satisfaction is glory, and it's easy to have glory without power. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Psychology often becomes the disease of which it should be the cure. View quote
Bertrand Russell
If a law were passed giving six months to every writer of a first book, only the good ones would do it. View quote
Bertrand Russell
The fundamental defect of Christian ethics consists in the fact that it labels certain classes of acts 'sins' and others 'virtue' on grounds that have nothing to do with their social consequences. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Vanity is a motive of immense potency. View quote
Bertrand Russell
On the one hand, philosophy is to keep us thinking about things that we may come to know, and on the other hand to keep us modestly aware of how much that seems like knowledge isn't knowledge. View quote
Bertrand Russell
When the journey from means to end is not too long, the means themselves are enjoyed if the end is ardently desired. View quote
Bertrand Russell
The frequency with which a man experiences lust depends upon his own physical condition, whereas the occasion which rouse such feelings in him depend upon the social conventions to which he is accustomed. View quote
Bertrand Russell
By self-interest, Man has become gregarious, but in instinct he has remained to a great extent solitary hence the need of religion and morality to reinforce self-interest. View quote
Bertrand Russell
I do not think any reasonable person can doubt that in India, China and Japan, if the knowledge of birth control existed, the birthrate would fall very rapidly. (Bertrand Russell)
I do not pretend that birth control is the only way in which population can be kept from increasing. There are others, which, one must suppose, opponents of birth control would prefer. View quote
Bertrand Russell
There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago. View quote
Bertrand Russell
A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree or certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world suffers. View quote
Bertrand Russell
To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Measures of sterilization should, in my opinion, be very definitely confined to persons who are mentally defective. View quote
Bertrand Russell
The atomic bomb embodies the results of a combination genius and patience as remarkable as any in the history of mankind. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Some advanced thinkers' are of the opinion that anyone who differs from the conventional opinion must be in the right. This is a delusion if it were not, truth would be easier to come by than it is. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Written words differ from spoken words in being material structures. A spoken word is a process in the physical world, having an essential time-order; a written word is a series of pieces of matter, having an essential space-order. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Our individual life is brief, and perhaps the whole life of mankind will be brief if measured in astronomical scale. View quote
Bertrand Russell
There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literature or great philosophy they will not be able to discover the secret springs of happiness in the human heart they will know nothing of love and friendship. (Bertrand Russell)
Bad philosophers may have a certain influence good philosophers, never. View quote
Bertrand Russell
Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, the chief glory of man. View quote
Bertrand Russell
To expect a personality to survive the disintegration of the brain is like expecting a cricket club to survive when all of its members are dead. View quote
Bertrand Russell
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway about the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. View quote
Bertrand Russell