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There are three ways of securing a society that shall be stable as regards population. The first is that of birth control, the second that of infanticide or really destructive wars, and the third that of general misery except for a powerful minority.

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
Way
Ways
Population
Minority
Powerful
Regard
Minorities
Society
Except
Stable
War
General
Wars
Three
Birth
Destructive
Infanticide
Firsts
Second
Third
Securing
First
Control
Thirds
Eugenics
Really
Shall
Misery
Regards

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The human heart as modern civilization has made it is more prone to hatred than to friendship. And it is prone to hatred because it is dissatisfied.
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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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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
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Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
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Protagoras did not know if the gods exist, but he held in any case they ought to be worshiped. Philosophy, according to him, had nothing edifying to teach, and for the survival of morals we must rely upon the thoughtlessness of the majority and their willingness to believe what they had been taught.
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The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
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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.
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I used, when I was younger, to take my holidays walking. I would cover 25 miles a day, and when the evening came I had no need of anything to keep me from boredom, since the delight of sitting amply sufficed.
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The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
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Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
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The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress.
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The purpose of education is to teach a defense against eloquence.
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The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty.
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People who are vigorous and brutal often find war enjoyable.
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To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.
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In his youth, Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry and had a natural daughter. At this period, he was a bad man. Then he became good, abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles and wrote bad poetry.
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Respectability, regularity, and routine - the whole cast-iron discipline of a modern industrial society - have atrophied the artistic impulse, and imprisoned love so that it can no longer be generous and free and creative, but must be either stuffy or furtive.
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