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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.

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
Nothing
Exist
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Must
Cases
Rely
Believe
Ought
Gods
Taught
According
Philosophy
Held
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Survival
Edifying
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Majority
Thoughtlessness
Upon
Case
Morals

More quotes by Bertrand Russell

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The late F. W. H. Myers used to tell how he asked a man at a dinner table what he thought would happen to him when he died. The man tried to ignore the question, but, on being pressed, replied: Oh well, I suppose I shall inherit eternal bliss, but I wish you wouldn't talk about such unpleasant subjects.
Bertrand Russell
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Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.
Bertrand Russell
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I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious.
Bertrand Russell
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Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.
Bertrand Russell
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Is the set of all sets which are not members of themselves a member of itself?
Bertrand Russell
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Of course not. After all, I may be wrong.
Bertrand Russell
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The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell
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A man's acts are partly determined by spontaneous impulse, partly by the conscious and unconscious effects of the various groups to which he belongs.
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Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God, or with mystic insight, or with any of the matters with which the more elevated and spiritual moralists are concerned.
Bertrand Russell
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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
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One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.
Bertrand Russell
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The difficulty is old, but none the less real. An omnipotent being who created a world containing evil not due to sin must Himself be at least partially evil.
Bertrand Russell
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For a good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times make it seem almost like a live teacher.
Bertrand Russell
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Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
Bertrand Russell
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It is entirely clear that there is only one way in which great wars can be permanently prevented, and that is the establishment of an international government with a monopoly of serious armed force.
Bertrand Russell
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One is always a little afraid of love, but above all, one is afraid of pain or causing pain.
Bertrand Russell
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There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them and feel justified in lying to them.
Bertrand Russell
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No opinion has ever been too errant to become a creed.
Bertrand Russell
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Education, and the life of the mind generally, is a matter in which individual initiative is the chief thing needed the function of the state should begin and end with insistence on some kind of education, and, if possible, a kind which promotes mental individualism, not a kind which happens to conform to the prejudices of government officials.
Bertrand Russell
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At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love. I had not imagined there was anything so delicious in the world. From that moment until I was thirty-eight, mathematics was my chief interest and my chief source of happiness.
Bertrand Russell