Quote

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

Bertrand Russell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Others
Enjoying
Political
Consists
Power
Generally
Greatest
Politics
Pleasure
Enjoy
Preventing
Next
Acquisition

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

Image
People who are vigorous and brutal often find war enjoyable.
Bertrand Russell
Image
To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.
Bertrand Russell
Image
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
Image
Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.
Bertrand Russell
Image
What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy.
Bertrand Russell
Image
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.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics.
Bertrand Russell
Image
If a philosophy is to bring happiness it should be inspired by kindly feelings. Marx pretended that he wanted the happiness of the proletariat what he really wanted was the unhappiness of the bourgeois.
Bertrand Russell
Image
There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Whenever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness, it is a sign of emotional failure.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Ants and savages put strangers to death.
Bertrand Russell
Image
To create a healthy philosophy you should renounce metaphysics but be a good mathematician.
Bertrand Russell
Image
If a law were passed giving six months to every writer of a first book, only the good ones would do it.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Logic must no more admit a unicorn than zoology can.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration.
Bertrand Russell
Image
A physicist looks for causes that does not necessarily imply that there are causes everywhere. A man may look for gold without assuming that there is gold everywhere if he finds gold, well and good, if he doesn't he's had bad luck. The same is true when the physicists look for causes.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The use of force stands in need of control by a public neutral authority, in the interests of liberty no less than of justice. Within a nation, this public authority will naturally be the state in relations between nations, if the present anarchy is to cease, it will have to be some international parliament.
Bertrand Russell
Image
All definite knowledge - so I should contend - belongs to science all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack by both sides this No Man's Land is philosophy.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know.
Bertrand Russell