Quote

The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.

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
Would
Knew
Bases
Disbelieve
Men
Lying
Harm
Governors
Love
Upon
Absolutely
Falsehood
World
Peace
Based
Virtues
Truth
Lies
Wicked
Real
Teaching
Entirely
Believe
Taught
Basis
Always
Virtue
Believed

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

Image
Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable, and praised when they are not praiseworthy.
Bertrand Russell
Image
It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.
Bertrand Russell
Image
A world full of happiness is not beyond human power to create the obstacles imposed by inanimate nature are not insuperable. The real obstacles lie in the heart of man, and the cure for these is a firm hope, informed and fortified by thought.
Bertrand Russell
Image
I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.
Bertrand Russell
Image
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 great importance.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the source of opinion it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to unbelievers it asks of its disciples that they should inhibit natural kindliness in favor of systematic hatred.
Bertrand Russell
Image
If we spent half an hour every day in silent immobility, I am convinced that we should conduct all our affairs, personal, national, and international, far more sanely than we do at present.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Aristotle and Plato considered Greeks so innately superior to barbarians that slavery is justified so long as the master is Greek and the slave barbarian.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Berkeley retains the merit of having shown that the existence of matter is capable of being denied without absurdity.
Bertrand Russell
Image
A hallucination is a fact, not an error what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
Bertrand Russell
Image
There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire - poison and antidote.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The purpose of education is to teach a defense against eloquence.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty-a beauty cold and austere ... yet sublimely pure and capable of stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Intelligence, it might be said, has caused our troubles but it is not unintelligence that will cure them. Only more and wiser intelligence can make a happier world
Bertrand Russell
Image
It is only through imagination that men become aware of what the world might be without it, ‘progress’ would become mechanical and trivial.
Bertrand Russell
Image
I did not know I loved you until I heard myself telling so, for one instance I thought, Good God, what have I said? and then I knew it was true.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The essence of good manners consists in making it clear that one has no wish to hurt. When it is clearly necessary to hurt, it must be done in such a way as to make it evident that the necessity is felt to be regrettable.
Bertrand Russell
Image
A generation educated in fearless freedom will have wider and bolder hopes than are possible to us
Bertrand Russell