Bertrand Russell Quotes of This Week
Archive (2005e)
［n.13］
It is a curious fact that nine people out of ten become happier when faced with some small misfortune. On my first visit to America, thirty-five years ago, a train in which I was travelling became stuck in a snowdrift so that we did not arrive in New York until a great many hours after all the food on the train had been eaten up. I was beginning to expect that the passengers would draw lots as to who should be eaten, but, far from that, everybody was in the best of spirits. (source)
［n.12］
One of the unforeseen and unintended results of the increasing importance of experts in the modern world is that, in a great many departments of life, the ordinary man has become passive where he used to be active. (source)
I think it is clear that to start the economic machine again working normally it will be necessary no longer to demand that each operation should at each moment be profitable. There is food rotting in the West of the United States and Canada; there are unemployed populations starving in all the industrial regions throughout the world. If the food were brought to the starving populations, and they were set to work such as would satisfy the wants of Western farmers, the world would be the richer even if no individual capitalist made a profit. The motive of individual profit has apparently broken down, and only organised public effort will restore the economic life of the world. (source)
［n.10］
The desire for posthumous fame has grown less than it was in those days, because of the growth of newspapers. Contemporary fame can now be much greater than it could be in former times that it has almost crowded out the wish for the slender trickle of admiration derivable from the readers of history. The fame of a film star at the present day far exceeds that of Alxander or Caesar at the height of his career. Probably more people know the name of Einstein now than have known the name of Archimedes in all the centuries from his day to our own. The effect of all this is that admiration is sought in more ephemeral forms than those formely desired. Men's work becomes less statuesque, and there is more effort to make it appeal to all and sundry. (source)
［n.9］
The greatest field for snobbery is the Monarchy, which succeeds in doing more harm than most English people suppose. Few people can bring themselves to treat the opinions of a monarch with no more respect than they would show to those of a common mortal, and yet the education and surroundings of royalty are hardly such as to promote intelligence. In England, while the King has no power to dictate policy, he has the right to have it explained to him by the Prime Minister and to express his opinion of it privately to the Prime Minister. A democratic politician is very likely to be overawed by the unaccustomed pomp and to be led, almost unconsciously, into a deference for royal judgements, which is not likely to be advantageous to the public. (source)
［n.8］
But nowadays almost every young man has to begin with a very subordinate post in some vast organisation. His superiors seldom have the tolerance of the experienced schoolmaster and are likely to give promotion to the 'good' boy. ... The man who has learnt to obey will either have lost all personal initiative or will have become so filled with rage against the authorities that his initiative will have become destructive and cruel. (source)
［n.7］
Two minutes a year, on Armistice Day, are given to silence, and all the other minutes of the year to largely futile bustle. The pro portion is wrong; if the silence were longer, the bustle would be less futile. (source)
［n.6］
Every student of history or sociology must be struck by the fact that the men who do the most harm are not the sort of criminals who are sent to prison but the sort to whom equestrian statues are put up. (source)
［n.5］
Having been an Imperialist, I became during those five minutes a pro-Boer and a Pacifist. Having for years cared only for exactness and analysis, I found myself filled with semi-mystical feelings about beauty, with an intense interest in children, and with a desire almost as profound as that of the Buddha to find some philosophy which should make human life endurable. (source)
［n4］
In the life of every man there are some elements that are practically inalterable while there are others which are subject to fluctuations, fortunate or unfortunate. The inalterable elements are taken for granted while those that fluctuate are matters for hope and fear. ... If a man's income is fixed, he will not think much about money; if his social position is inalterable, he will not be a snob; if he believes his country's greatness to be unassailable, he will not be a vehement nationalist. (source)
［n3］
... Where there is delight in a process, there will be style, and the activity of production will itself have aethetic quality. But when men assimilate themselves to machines and value only the consequences of their work, not the work itself, style disappears, to be replaced by something which to the mechanised man appears more natural, though in fact it is only more brutal. (source)
［n2］
... A great deal of our modern trouble has come from mixing up romantic love, which is a petic and anarchic impulse, with marriage, which is a social institution. The French have not made this mistake, and on the whole they are considerably happier in these respects than than English-speaking nations (source)
［n1］
... The first time one learns that one's best friends are liable to be wittily satirical at one's expense, the experience is very painful, and one feels furious in spite of the consciousness of often having done the same thing oneself; but a little expeirence and a llite reflection will convince anybody that he cannot hope to be an exception and to have none of his foibles ever laughed at. (source)