Quote

The fundamental defect of Christian ethics consists in the fact that it labels certain classes of acts 'sins' and others 'virtue' on grounds that have nothing to do with their social consequences.

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
Nothing
Virtue
Labels
Class
Consequences
Fact
Acts
Defect
Christian
Fundamental
Grounds
Social
Fundamentals
Defects
Facts
Ethics
Classes
Others
Consequence
Consists
Certain
Sin
Sins

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

Image
No opinion has ever been too errant to become a creed.
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
Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.
Bertrand Russell
Image
In all the creative work that I have done, what has come first is a problem, a puzzle involving discomfort.
Bertrand Russell
Image
A million million years gives us some time to prepare for the end . . . let us make the best of it.
Bertrand Russell
Image
There is no greater reason for children to honour parents than for parents to honour children except, that while the children are young, the parents are stronger than children.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness is dead.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Man can be stimulated by hope or driven by fear, but the hope and the fear must be vivid and immediate if they are to be effective without producing weariness.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Mysticism is, in essence, little more than a certain intensity and depth of feeling in regard to what is believed about the universe.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.
Bertrand Russell
Image
War doesn't determine who's right, it determines who's left
Bertrand Russell
Image
We know too much and feel too little.
Bertrand Russell
Image
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.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Americans need rest, but do not know it. I believe this to be a large part of the explanation of the crime wave in the United States.
Bertrand Russell
Image
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Bertrand Russell
Image
3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is a paradox as is a paradox why the number 1 is not prime if it has no other divisors besides himself.
Bertrand Russell
Image
The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Dora and I are now married, but just as happy as we were before.
Bertrand Russell
Image
To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need of our civilisation.
Bertrand Russell
Image
Some people would rather die than think.
Bertrand Russell