Bertrand Russell Quotes About Duty

• War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

  Bertrand Russell

  Peace, Military, War

• My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.

  Bertrand Russell

  Religion, Rewards, Duty

  Bertrand Russell (1986). “Bertrand Russell on God and Religion”

• Love cannot exists as a duty; to tell a child that it ought to love its parents and its brother and sisters is utterly useless, if not worse.

  Bertrand Russell

  Love, Brother, Children

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “On Education”, p.124, Routledge

• All the time that he can spare from the adornment of his person, he devotes to the neglect of his duties.

  Bertrand Russell

  Time, Neglect, Duty

  "Some Cambridge Dons of the Nineties" by Bertrand Russell, 1956.

• A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.

  Bertrand Russell

  People, Wish, Patient

  Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 10

• Love can only flourish as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought that it is a duty. To say that it is your duty to love so-and-so is the surest way to cause you to hate him or her.

  Bertrand Russell

  Hate, Long, Way

  "Marriage and Morals".

• I should like to believe my people's religion, which was just what I could wish, but alas, it is impossible. I have really no religion, for my God, being a spirit shown merely by reason to exist, his properties utterly unknown, is no help to my life. I have nor the parson's comfortable doctrine that every good action has its reward, and every sin is forgiven. My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.

  Bertrand Russell

  Believe, People, Wish

  Bertrand Russell (1986). “Bertrand Russell on God and Religion”

• So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it.

  Bertrand Russell

  Long, Sorrow, Facts

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.333, Routledge

• It was the duty of wives to submit to husbands, not of husbands to submit to wives. . . men have stronger muscles than women.

  Bertrand Russell

  Husband, Men, Wife

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.22, Routledge

• We are told that Sin consists in acting contrary to God's commands, but we are also told that God is omnipotent. . . . This leads to frightful results. . . . The British State considers it the duty of an Englishman to kill people who are not English whenever a collection of elderly gentlemen in Westminster tells him to do so. . . . Church and State are placable enemies of both intelligence and virtue.

  Bertrand Russell

  Elderly, People, Gentleman

• It is false to suggest that men must turn away from his desires in the interest of a higher duty. Men only responds to duty if he desires to do so. To understand men, you must understand their desires and the relative strength of those desires.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Desire, Duty

• If the youth is content to abandon his previous associates and to throw in his lot whole-heartedly with the rulers, he may, after suitable tests, be promoted, but if he shows any regrettable solidarity with his previous associates, the rulers will reluctantly conclude that there is nothing to be done with him except to send him to the lethal chamber before his ill-disciplined intelligence has had time to spread revolt. This will be a painful duty to the rulers, but I think they will not shrink from performing it.

  Bertrand Russell

  Thinking, Done, May

• The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth. I'm not contending in a dogmatic way that there is not a God. What I'm contending is that we don't know that there is. I don't like the word "absolute." I don't think there is anything absolute whatever. The moral law, for example, is always changing. At one period in the development of the human race, almost everybody thought cannibalism was a duty.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Thinking, Law

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