Bertrand Russell Quotes About Insanity

• Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

  Bertrand Russell

  Fear, Men, Thinking

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.106, Routledge

• War...seems a mere madness, a collective insanity.

  Bertrand Russell

  War, Insanity, Madness

• Every isolated passion, is, in isolation, insane; sanity may be defined as synthesis of insanities. Every dominant passion generates a dominant fear, the fear of its non-fulfillment. Every dominant fear generates a nightmare, sometimes in form of explicit and conscious fanaticism, sometimes in paralyzing timidity, sometimes in an unconscious or subconscious terror which finds expression only in dreams. The man who wishes to preserve sanity in a dangerous world should summon in his own mind a parliament of fears, in which each in turn is voted absurd by all the others.

  Bertrand Russell

  Dream, Passion, Men

• I must confess that I am deeply troubled. I fear that human beings are intent upon acting out a vast deathwish and that it lies with us now to make every effort to promote resistance to the insanity and brutality of policies which encompass the extermination of hundreds of millions of human beings.

  Bertrand Russell

  Lying, Effort, Insanity

  Bertrand Russell (1967). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”

• When anaesthetics were invented they were thought to be wicked as being an attempt to thwart God's will. Insanity was thought to be due to diabolic possession, and it was believed that demons inhabiting a madman could be driven out by inflicting pain upon him, and so making them uncomfortable. In pursuit of this opinion, lunatics were treated for years on end with systematic and conscientious brutality.

  Bertrand Russell

  Pain, Years, Insanity

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.107, Routledge

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