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Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

Bertrand Russell

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Bertrand Russell
Age: 97 †
Born: 1872
Born: May 18
Died: 1970
Died: February 2
Analytic Philosopher
Autobiographer
Epistemologist
Essayist
Journalist
Logician
Mathematician
Metaphysician
Peace Activist
Philosopher
Tryleg
Bertrand Arthur William Russell
Russell
Bertrand Russell
3rd Earl Russell
Bertrand Russell
Earl Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell
3rd Earl Russell
History
Religions
Sense
Vice
Power
Throughout
Men
Vices
Drive
Ascetic
Seek
Asceticism
Pleasure
Condemn
Religion
Pleasures

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If we compare Europe with other continents, it is marked out as [another] persecuting continent.
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Children, after being limbs of Satan in traditional theology and mystically illuminated angels in the minds of educational reformers, have reverted to being little devils not theological demons inspired by the evil one, but scientific Freudian abominations inspired by the unconscious.
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Memory demands an image.
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Stupidity and unconscious bias often work more damage than venality.
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Machines have altered our way of life, but not our instincts. Consequently, there is maladjustment.
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When the journey from means to end is not too long, the means themselves are enjoyed if the end is ardently desired.
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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
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Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
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If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody, and no unemployment — assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to use so much leisure.
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War grows out of ordinary human nature.
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[Kant] was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed imjplicitly in the maximx that he had imbibed at his mother's knee.
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In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.
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Moral progress has consisted in the main of protest against cruel customs, and of attempts to enlarge human sympathy.
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The typical Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as possible.
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The secrets to happiness include enterprise, exploration of one's interests and the overcoming of obstacles.
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Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.
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Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
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An Honest politician will not be tolerated by a democracy unless he is very stupid ... because only a very stupid man can honestly share the prejudices of more than half the nation.
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Measures of sterilization should, in my opinion, be very definitely confined to persons who are mentally defective
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Calculus required continuity, and continuity was supposed to require the infinitely little but nobody could discover what the infinitely little might be.
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