"The Emotional Factor"Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.
Often paraphrased as "The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world."
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Kontext: You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress of humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or even mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.
Bertrand Russell: Citáty v angličtine (page 8)
Bertrand Russell bol logik a jeden z prvých analytických filozofov. Citáty v angličtine.“How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?”
"Message from Bertrand Russell to the International Conference of Parlimentarians in Cairo, February 1970," reprinted in The New York Times (23 February 1970)
1960s
Kontext: The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was "given" by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East.
A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42 (1996), p. 544
Attributed from posthumous publications
Zdroj: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
“Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.”
1900s, "The Study of Mathematics" (November 1907)
Kontext: Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry. What is best in mathematics deserves not merely to be learnt as a task, but to be assimilated as a part of daily thought, and brought again and again before the mind with ever-renewed encouragement.
“Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.”
1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
Zdroj: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 8: Eastern and Western Ideals of Happiness
“Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.”
1940s, A History of Western Philosophy (1945)
“Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.”
Zdroj: The Problems of Philosophy
"The Moral Problem"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Zdroj: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Kontext: There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.