happiness 17
- Happiness that needs intoxication of any kind is spurious; satisfying happiness comes with the fullest use of one's faculties
- Power kept within proper bounds may add greatly to happiness, but as life's sole end it leads to disaster
Bertrand Russell
British philosopher and logician (1872 to 1970), also a social critic; co-author with Alfred North Whitehead of Principia Mathematica (1910 to 1913), author of The Problems of Philosophy (1912), awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950.
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What Bertrand Russell says most about
government 6
- Punishing conscientious objectors seems clearly to violate individual liberty
- States have no more claim to absolute sovereignty than individuals do
humility 6
- Admitting at least one painful truth to oneself every day is as useful as a daily kind action
- Do not act on customary beliefs where the action is disastrous unless they are wholly true
democracy 3
- There can be no real freedom or democracy until workers control the management of their business
- There is no reason to think buying out the railways with full compensation advances democracy, freedom or economic justice
politics 3
- A social system should be judged at least as much by its effects outside economics and politics as inside them
- The international spirit should add to love of country, not take away from it
war 3
- Possessiveness is the ultimate source of war and of the political world's ills
- Punishing conscientious objectors seems clearly to violate individual liberty
creativity 2
- The world worth seeking is one built on the impulse to create rather than the desire to keep or seize possessions
- The best life gives the most room to creative impulses and the least to possessive ones
energy 2
- Nothing is as dull as being encased in oneself, nothing as exhilarating as directing attention and energy outward
- Among the politically effective, love of power is a stronger motive than economic self-interest