Bertrand Russell Quotes About Impulse

• The teacher, like the artist, the philosopher, and the man of letters, can only perform his work adequately if he feels himself to be an individual directed by an inner creative impulse, not dominated and fettered by an outside authority.

  Bertrand Russell

  Teacher, Artist, Creative

  "The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell".

• The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.

  Bertrand Russell

  Play, Creative, Life Is

  Bertrand Russell, Richard A. Rempel (1995). “Pacifism and Revolution, 1916-18”, p.228, Psychology Press

• a generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow process of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers as though they were cut flowers in a vase.

  Bertrand Russell

  Flower, Cutting, Men

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Conquest of Happiness”, p.36, Lulu Press, Inc

• But courage in fighting is by no means the only form, nor perhaps even the most important. There is courage in facing poverty, courage in facing derision, courage in facing the hostility of one's own herd. In these, the bravest soldiers are often lamentably deficient. And above all there is the courage to think calmly and rationally in the face of danger, and to control the impulse of panic fear or panic rage.

  Bertrand Russell

  Courage, Mean, Fighting

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.364, Routledge

• 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”

• The criminal law has, from the point of view of thwarted virtue, the merit of allowing an outlet for those impulses of aggression which cowardice, disguised as morality, restrains in their more spontaneous forms. War has the same merit. You must not kill you neighbor, whom perhaps you genuinely hate, but by a little propaganda this hate can be transferred to some foreign nation, against whom all your murderous impulses become patriotic heroism.

  Bertrand Russell

  Hate, War, Patriotic

• The harm that theology has done is not to create cruel impulses, but to give them the sanction of what professes to be lofty ethic, and to confer an apparently sacred character upon practices which have come down from more ignorant and barbarous times.

  Bertrand Russell

  Character, Practice, Giving

  Bertrand Russell (1997). “Religion and Science”, p.106, Oxford University Press, USA

• A man's acts are partly determined by spontaneous impulse, partly by the conscious and unconscious effects of the various groups to which he belongs.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Groups, Determined

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Icarus; or, the Future of Science”, p.10, Lulu Press, Inc

• Opinions which justify cruelty are inspired by cruel impulses.

  Bertrand Russell

  Opinion, Inspired, Cruelty

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.144, Routledge

• There are certain things that our age needs. It needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.

  Bertrand Russell

  Hope, Creativity, Age

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

• The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.

  Bertrand Russell

  Thinking, Punishment, Belief

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.144, Routledge

• 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

• Respectability, regularity, and routine - the whole cast-iron discipline of a modern industrial society - have atrophied the artistic impulse, and imprisoned love so that it can no longer be generous and free and creative, but must be either stuffy or furtive.

  Bertrand Russell

  Iron, Discipline, Creative

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.12, Psychology Press

• A good social system is not to be secured by making people unselfish, but, by making their own vital impulses fit in with other peoples. This is feasible. Those who have produced stoic philosophies have all had enough to eat and drink. I feel I shall find the truth on my deathbed and be surrounded by people too stupid to understand—fussing about medicines instead of searching for wisdom. I hate being all tidy like a book in a library where nobody reads – prison is horribly like that.

  Bertrand Russell

  Hate, Philosophy, Stupid

• Civilized life, if it is to be stable, must provide a harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting. In Australia, where people are few, and rabbits are many, I watched the whole populace satisfying the primitive impulse in the primitive manner by the skilful slaughter of many thousands of rabbits.

  Bertrand Russell

  Hunting, Australia, People

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.5, Routledge

• A life which goes excessively against natural impulse is... likely to involve effects of strain that may be quite as bad as indulgence in forbidden impulses would have been. People who live a life which is unnatural beyond a point are likely to be filled with envy, malice and uncharitableness.

  Bertrand Russell

  People, Envy, May

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Authority and the Individual”, p.8, Routledge

• The practice of inhibiting impulses, which is to a great extent necessary to civilized life, makes mistakes easier, by preventing experience of the actions to which a desire would otherwise lead, and by often causing the inhibited impulses themselves to be unnoticed or quickly forgotten.

  Bertrand Russell

  Mistake, Practice, Desire

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “The Analysis of Mind: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.40, 谷月社

• The world that we must seek is a world in which the creative spirit is alive, in which life is an adventure full of joy and hope, based rather upon the impulse to construct than upon the desire to retain what we possess or to seize what is possessed by others.

  Bertrand Russell

  Adventure, Creative, Joy

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “Roads to Freedom”, p.154, Routledge

• Most men do not feel in themselves the competence required for leading their group to victory, and therefore seek out a captain who appears to possess the courage and sagacity necessary for the achievement of supremacy. Even in religion this impulse appears. Nietzsche accused Christianity of inculcating a slave-morality, but ultimate triumph was always the goal. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

  Bertrand Russell

  Blessed, Men, Goal

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Power: A New Social Analysis”, p.29, Routledge

• Civilized life has altogether grown too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide a harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting.

  Bertrand Russell

  Hunting, Outlets, Impulse

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.452, Routledge

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