Bertrand Russell

“It is we who create value and our desires which confer value. In this realm we are kings, and we debase our kingship if we bow down to Nature. It is for us to determine the good life, not for Nature - not even for Nature personified as God.”

“the great world, so far as we know it from philosophy of nature, is neither good nor bad, and is not concerned to make us happy or unhappy. All such philosophies spring from self-importance, and are best corrected by a little astronomy.”

“Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanising myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.”

“Secondo me la religione si basa, essenzialmente, sulla paura. In parte è il terroredell’ignoto, in parte, come ho già detto, il bisogno istintivo di immaginare qualcunoche ci aiuti e ci protegga nei pericoli: suppergiù una specie di fratello maggiore. Inprincipio, dunque, fu la paura: paura dell’occulto, paura dell’insuccesso, paura dellamorte. La paura porta alla crudeltà, ed è per questo che crudeltà e religione stannobene insieme. Oggi, tanti fenomeni non sono più misteriosi grazie alla scienza, che siè opposta alla religione cristiana, alle Chiese, e a tutti i princìpi anacronistici. Lascienza può aiutare l’umanità a superare questa vile paura, nella quale ha vissuto pertante generazioni. Con l’aiuto della scienza e del nostro cuore, impareremo a noncercare aiuti immaginari, a non inventare alleati in Cielo, ma piuttosto a valerci dellenostre forze per rendere questo mondo più piacevole e diverso da quello che èdivenuto, in questi secoli, sotto l’influsso delle Chiese.”

“Un giorno,però, a diciotto anni, leggendo l’autobiografia di John Stuart Mill 1 , trovai questafrase: «Mio padre mi insegnò che la domanda: “Chi mi creò?” non può avere risposta,perché suggerisce immediatamente un nuovo interrogativo: “Chi creò Dio?”»Compresi allora quanto fosse errato l’argomento della Causa Prima. Se tutto deveavere una causa, anche Dio deve averla. Se niente può esistere senza una causa, alloraperché il mondo sì e Dio no? Questo principio della Causa Prima non è miglioredell’analoga teoria indù, che afferma come il mondo poggi sopra un elefante, el’elefante sopra una tartaruga. Alla domanda: «E la tartaruga dove poggia?» l’indùrispose: «Vogliamo cambiare discorso?» Non c’è dunque motivo per sostenere che ilmondo debba proprio avere una causa ed un’origine. Potrebbe anche essere sempreesistito. È soltanto la nostra scarsa immaginazione che vuole trovare un’origine atutto.”

“The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead.”

“Whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.”

“As against solipsism it is to be said, in the first place, that it is psychologically impossible to believe, and is rejected in fact even by those who mean to accept it. I once received a letter from an eminent logician, Mrs. Christine Ladd-Franklin, saying that she was a solipsist, and was surprised that there were no others. Coming from a logician and a solipsist, her surprise surprised me.”

“Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.”

“En aşağı tasarılarımız ve yoksulluğumuz kadar,çirkinlikte, bizim özel girişim kârına köle olmak için ödediğimiz fiyatın bir bölümüdür.”

“Tarihsel bakımdan konuşursak,görev kavramı,iktidar sahipleri tarafından başkalarına kendi çıkarlarından çok efendilerinin çıkarı için yaşamaları gerektiği düşüncesini aşılamakta bir araç olarak kullanılmıştır.Doğallıkla, iktidar sahipleri, kendi çıkarlarının , insanlığın daha geniş çaptaki çıkarlarıyla özdeş olduğuna kendi kendilerine inandırarak, bu olguyu yine kendi kendilerinden saklamaktadırlar.”

“Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realize the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.”

“Yo no nací dichoso. De niño, mi himno favorito era: «Cansado del mundo y con el peso de mis pecados». A los cinco años yo pensaba que si había de vivir setenta no había pasado aún más que la catorceava parte de mi vida vital, y me parecía casi insoportable la enorme cantidad de aburrimiento que me aguardaba. En la adolescencia la vida me era odiosa, y estaba continuamente al borde del suicidio, del cual me libré gracias al deseo de saber más matemáticas. Hoy, por el contrario, gusto de la vida, y casi estoy por decir que cada año que pasa la encuentro más gustosa. Esto es debido, en parte, a haber descubierto cuáles eran las cosas que deseaba más y haber adquirido gradualmente muchas de ellas. En parte es debido también a haberme desprendido, felizmente, de ciertos deseos (la adquisición del conocimiento indudable acerca de algo) como esencialmente inasequibles. Pero en la mayor parte se debe a la preocupación, cada día menor, de mí mismo.”

“Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.”

“To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.”

“The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.”

“Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of very great importance.”

“Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science.”

“It is the part of courage, when misfortune comes, to bear without repining the ruin of our hopes, to turn away our thoughts from vain regrets. This degree of submission to Power is not only just and right: it is the very gate of wisdom.”

“Drunkenness is temporary suicide.”

“The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination.”

“Collective wisdom, alas, is no adequate substitute for the intelligence of individuals. Individuals who opposed received opinions have been the source of all progress, both moral and intellectual. They have been unpopular, as was natural.”

“For all serious intellectual progress depends upon a certain kind of independence of outside opinion, which cannot exist where the will of the majority is treated with that kind of religious respect which the orthodox give to the will of God.”

“Those who have a scientific outlook on human behaviour, moreover, find it impossible to label any action as ‘sin’; they realise that what we do has its origin in our heredity, our education, and our environment, and that it is by control of these causes, rather than by denunciation, that conduct injurious to society is to be prevented.”

“The Church no longer contends that knowledge is in itself sinful, though it did so in its palmy days; but the acquisition of knowledge, even though not sinful, is dangerous, since it may lead to pride of intellect, and hence to a questioning of the Christian dogma.”

“One must care about a world one will not see.”

“Clarity, above all, has been my aim.”

“With subjectivism in philosophy, anarchism in politics goes hand in hand.http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bertrand...”

“The essence of the conception of righteousness, therefore, is to afford an outlet for sadism by cloaking cruelty as justice.”

“Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.”

“Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts.”

“dont let the old break you; let the love make you”

“no one ever gossips about the virtues of others”

“Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”

“There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal as a human being to human beings; remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”

“I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: "The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair." In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.”

“A truly scientific philosophy will be more humble, more piecemeal, more arduous, offering less glitter of outward mirage to flatter fallacious hopes, but more indifferent to fate, and more capable of accepting the world without the tyrannous imposition of our human and temporary demands.”

“To the primitive mind, everything is either friendly or hostile; but experience has shown that friendliness and hostility are not the conceptions by which the world is to be understood.”

“Philosophy which does not seek to impose upon the world its own conceptions of good and evil is not only more likely to achieve truth, but is also the outcome of a higher ethical standpoint than one which, like evolutionism and most traditional systems, is perpetually appraising the universe and seeking to find in it an embodiment of present ideals.”

“It is a commonplace that happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly; and it would seem that the same is true of the good. In thought, at any rate, those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.”

“Good and bad, and even the higher good that mysticism finds everywhere, are the reflections of our own emotions on other things, not part of the substance of things as they are in themselves.”

“The meta-physical creed, I shall maintain, is a mistaken outcome of the emotion, although this emotion, as colouring and informing all other thoughts and feelings, is the inspirer of whatever is best in Man.”

“People will tell us that without the consolations of religion they would be intolerably unhappy. So far as this is true, it is a coward's argument. Nobody but a coward would consciously choose to live in a fool's paradise. When a man suspects his wife of infidelity, he is not thought the better of for shutting his eyes to the evidence. And I cannot see why ignoring evidence should be contemptible in one case and admirable in the other.”

“It seems to me a fundamental dishonesty, and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it's useful and not because you think it's true.”

“You all know the argument from design: everything in the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the world, and if the world was ever so little different, we could not manage to live in it. That is the argument from design. It sometimes takes a rather curious form; for instance, it is argued that rabbits have white tails in order to be easy to shoot. I do not know how rabbits would view that application.”

“Has the universe any unity of plan or purpose, or is it a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Is conciousness a permanent part of the universe, giving hope of indefinite growth in wisdom, or is it a transitory accident on a small planet on which life must ultimately become impossible? Are good and evil of importance to the universe or only to man?”

“One of the commonest things to do with savings is to lend them to some Government. In view of the fact that the bulk of the public expenditure of most civilized Governments consists in payment for past wars or preparation for future wars, the man who lends his money to a Government is in the same position as the bad men in Shakespeare who hire murderers. The net result of the man's economical habits is to increase the armed forces of the State to which he lends his savings. Obviously it would be better if he spent the money, even if he spent it in drink or gambling.”

“El mundo que tenemos que buscar es un mundo en el cual el espíritu creador esté vivo, en el cual la vida sea una aventura llena de alegría y de esperanza, basada más en el impulso de construir que en el deseo de guardar lo que poseemos y de apoderarnos de lo que poseen los demás. Tiene que ser un mundo en el cual el cariño pueda obrar literalmente, el amor esté purgado del instinto de la dominación, la crueldad y la envidia hayan sido disipadas por la alegría y el desarrollo ilimitado de todos los instintos constructivos de la vida y la llenen de delicias espirituales. Un mundo así es posible; espera solamente a que los hombres quieran crearlo.”

“The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.”

“Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.”