Bertrand Russell Quotes About Desire

• Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Desire, Action

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.172, Routledge

• All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can only be refuted by science: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.

  Bertrand Russell

  People, Enemy, Suffering

  "The Science to Save Us from Science". The New York Times Magazine, March 19, 1950.

• No man can be a good teacher unless he has feelings of warm affection toward his pupils and a genuine desire to impart to them what he believes to be of value.

  Bertrand Russell

  Teacher, Believe, Teaching

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.417, Routledge

• Power is sweet; it is a drug, the desire for which increases with a habit.

  Bertrand Russell

  Sweet, War, Political

• The discipline in your life should be one determined by your own desires and your own needs, not put upon you by society or authority.

  Bertrand Russell

  Discipline, Desire, Needs

  Bertrand Russell (1987). “Bertrand Russell on ethics, sex, and marriage”

• Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

  Bertrand Russell

  Love, Life, Wedding

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Marriage and Morals”, p.79, Routledge

• Envy, in fact, is one form of a vice, partly moral, partly intellectual, which consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations.

  Bertrand Russell

  Envy, Desire, May

  "The Conquest of Happiness".

• The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interest of the desire to know.

  Bertrand Russell

  Attitude, Knowledge, Science

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.29, 谷月社

• Most human beings, though in varying degrees, desire to control, not only their own lives but also the lives of others

  Bertrand Russell

  Desire, Degrees, Lives Of Others

  Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Peter Köllner (1996). “A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42”, p.445, Psychology Press

• All human activity is prompted by desire.

  Bertrand Russell

  Desire, Humans, Human Activity

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “Human Society in Ethics and Politics”, p.160, Routledge

• Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.

  Bertrand Russell

  Freedom, Fear, Desire

  Bertrand Russell (1996). “The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell: A Fresh Look at Empiricism 1927-42”

• One of the most powerful of all our passions is the desire to be admired and respected.

  Bertrand Russell

  Powerful, Passion, Desire

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.66, Psychology Press

• ...I am afraid that education is conceived more in terms of indoctrination by most school officials than in terms of enlightenment. My own belief is that education must be subversive if it is to be meaningful. By this I mean that it must challenge all the things we take for granted, examine all accepted assumptions, tamper with every sacred cow, and instill a desire to question and doubt. Without this the mere instruction to memorise data is empty. The attempt to enforce conventional mediocrity on the young is criminal.

  Bertrand Russell

  Meaningful, School, Data

• It is essential to happiness that our way of living should spring from our own deep impulses and not from the accidental tastes and desires of those who happen to be our neighbors, or even our relations.

  Bertrand Russell

  Spring, Desire, Essentials

  Bertrand Russell (1975). “The conquest of happiness”

• These illustrations suggest four general maxims[...]. The first is: remember that your motives are not always as altruistic as they seem to yourself. The second is: don't over-estimate your own merits. The third is: don't expect others to take as much interest in you as you do yourself. And the fourth is: don't imagine that most people give enough thought to you to have any special desire to persecute you.

  Bertrand Russell

  Illustration, People, Giving

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.68, Lulu Press, Inc

• To abandon the struggle for private happiness, to expel all eagerness of temporary desire, to burn with passion for eternal things-this is emancipation, and this is the free man's worship... United with his fellow men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love.

  Bertrand Russell

  Spiritual, Struggle, Passion

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.36, 谷月社

• I resolved from the beginning of my quest that I would not be misled by sentiment and desire into beliefs for which there was no good evidence.

  Bertrand Russell

  Desire, Quests, Belief

  Bertrand Russell, Andrew G. Bone (2005). “Détente Or Destruction, 1955-57”, p.83, Psychology Press

• Most political leaders acquire their position by causing large numbers of people to believe that these leaders are actuated by altruistic desires

  Bertrand Russell

  Believe, Numbers, People

  Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.425, Psychology Press

• A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Desire, Proportion

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.39, Psychology Press

• Nothing of importance is ever achieved without discipline. I feel myself sometimes not wholly in sympathy with some modern educational theorists, because I think that they underestimate the part that discipline plays. But the discipline you have in your life should be one determined by your own desires and your own needs, not put upon you by society or authority.

  Bertrand Russell

  Educational, Thinking, Play

  Bertrand Russell (1987). “Bertrand Russell on ethics, sex, and marriage”

• Love as a relation between men and women was ruined by the desire to make sure of the legitimacy of children.

  Bertrand Russell

  Life, Children, Men

  Marriage and Morals

• In regard to the past, where contemplation is not obscured by desire and the need for action, we see, more clearly than in the lives about us, the value for good and evil, of the aims men have pursued and the means they have adopted. It is good, from time to time, to view the present as already past, and to examine what elements it contains that will add to the world's store of permanent possessions, that will live and give life when we and all our generation have perished.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mean, Men, Past

  Bertrand Russell (1985). “Contemplation and Action, 1902-14”, p.80, Psychology Press

• The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress.

  Bertrand Russell

  Two, Justice, Progress

  "Marriage and Morals". Book by Bertrand Russell, Ch. 20, p. 301, en.wikiquote.org. Marriage and Morals.

• There are certain things that our age needs, and certain things that it should avoid. It needs compassion and a wish that mankind should be happy; it needs the desire for knowledge and the determination to eschew pleasant myths; it needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.

  Bertrand Russell

  Faith, Determination, Compassion

  Bertrand Russell (1998). “Autobiography”, p.520, Psychology Press

• You may, if you are an old-fashioned schoolmaster, wish to consider yourself full of universal benevolence and at the same time derive great pleasure from caning boys. In order to reconcile these two desires you have to persuade yourself that caning

  Bertrand Russell

  Fashion, Boys, Order

  Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.425, Psychology Press

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