Russell Quotations

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32214, 5 February 1970, Page 13

Russell Quotations

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, Feb. 4. Lord Bertrand Russell, who has died at the age of 97, was one of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century. These are some of his views on love, life and philosophy:

“To fear love is to fear life, bnd those who fear life are already three parts dead.” “The psychology of adultery has been falsified by conventional morals, which assume, in monogamous countries, that attraction to one person cannot co-exist with a serious affection for another. Everybody knows that this is untrue.” “It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.” “A good society is a means to a good life for those who compose it, not something having a kind of excellence on its own account” “America . . . where law and custom alike are based

'upon the dreams of spinsters.” “Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.” “Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter. Second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill-paid, the second is pleasant and highly paid.” “Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.” “Mathematics 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, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.” “We are faced with the

paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom and thought.”

“The sentiments of an adult are compounded of a kernel of instinct surrounded by a vast husk of education.” “The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented hell.” “Many people, when they fall in love, look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable, and praised when they are not praiseworthy.” “To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need of our civilisation, but no such system has a chance while men are so unhappy that mutual extermination seems to them less dreadful than continued endurance of the light of day.” “Brief and powerless is man's life. On him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.”

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind . . . This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.”