Bertrand Russell Philosophical Quotes — Page 34

Philosopher, Mathematician

Philosophical

“Every isolated passion, is, in isolation, insane; sanity may be defined as synthesis of insanities. Every dominant passion generates a dominant fear, the fear of its non-fulfillment. Every dominant fear generates a nightmare, sometimes in form of explicit and conscious fanaticism, sometimes in paralyzing timidity, sometimes in an unconscious or subconscious terror which finds expression only in dreams. The man who wishes to preserve sanity in a dangerous world should summon in his own mind a parliament of fears, in which each in turn is voted absurd by all the others.”

Men Dream Passion

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Bertrand Russell

Philosopher, Mathematician

Philosophical

“Africans had to be taught that nudity is wicked; this was done very cheaply by missionaries.”

Done Taught Wicked

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Philosophical

“This is one of those views which are so absolutely absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them.”

Men Views Confusion

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Philosophical

“Cruelty is, in theory, a perfectly adequate ground for divorce, but it may be interpreted so as to become absurd.”

May Divorce Adequate

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Philosophical

“One eminently orthodox Catholic divine laid it down that a confessor may fondle a nun's breasts, provided he does it without evil intent.”

May Evil Catholic

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Philosophical

“Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully; after him, all have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat.”

World Philosophy Greek

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Philosophical

“The State is a collection of officials, different for difference purposes, drawing comfortable incomes so long as the status quo is preserved. The only alteration they are likely to desire in the status quo is an increase of bureaucracy and the power of bureaucrats.”

Long Differences Drawing

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Philosophical

“Thee might observe incidentally that if the state paid for child-bearing it might and ought to require a medical certificate that the parents were such as to give a reasonable result of a healthy child -- this would afford a very good inducement to some sort of care for the race, and gradually as public opinion became educated by the law, it might react on the law and make that more stringent, until one got to some state of things in which there would be a little genuine care for the race, instead of the present haphazard higgledy-piggledy ways.”

Children Law Race

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Philosophical

“The institution of representative government to us seems an essential part of democracy, but the ancients never thought of it. Its immense merit was that it enabled a large constituency to exert indirect power, and thus made possible the distribution of political responsibility throughout the great states of modern times.”

Government Political Responsibility

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Philosophical

“In spite of Death, the mark and seal of the parental control, Man is yet free, during his brief years, to examine, to criticise, to know, and in imagination to create. To him alone, in the world with which he is acquainted, this freedom belongs; and in this lies his superiority to the resistless forces that control his outward life.”

Men Years Lying

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Philosophical

“In the great depression, things could only be set right by causing the idle plant to work again . . . Roosevelt . . . spent billions of public money and created a huge public debt, but by so doing he revived production and brought his country out of the depression. Businessmen, who in spite of such a sharp lesson continued to believe in old-fashioned economics, were infinitely shocked, and although Roosevelt saved them from ruin, they continued to curse him and to speak of him as 'the madman in the White House.' . . . [It's one more] striking example of inability to learn from experience.”

Believe Country White

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Philosophical

“I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose.”

Use Mathematical Logic Plain English

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Bertrand Russell — Philosophical Quotes

Bertrand Russell Quotes