Bertrand Russell Quotes About Parents

• I had supposed until that time that it was quite common for parents to love their children, but the war persuaded me that it is a rare exception. I had supposed that most people liked money better than almost anything else, but I discovered that they liked destruction even better. I had supposed that intellectuals frequently loved truth, but I found here again that not ten per cent of them prefer truth to popularity.

  Bertrand Russell

  Love, Children, War

  Bertrand Russell (1998). “Autobiography”, p.240, Psychology Press

• Religion is based ... mainly upon fear ... fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.

  Bertrand Russell

  Atheist, Race, Views

• Choose your parents wisely.

  Bertrand Russell

  Parent

  Bertrand Russell (2012). “The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell Volume 29: Détente or Destruction, 1955-57”, p.365, Routledge

• 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

• There is no greater reason for children to honour parents than for parents to honour children except, that while the children are young, the parents are stronger than children.

  Bertrand Russell

  Anniversary, Children, Parent

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Bertrand Russell's Best”, p.11, Routledge

• There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them and feel justified in lying to them.

  Bertrand Russell

  Education, Children, Lying

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.177, Simon and Schuster

• When I say that children should be told about sex, I do not mean that they should be told only the bare physiological facts; they should be told whatever they wish to know. There should be no attempt to represent adults as more virtuous than they are, or sex as occurring only in marriage. There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them, and feel justified in lying to them.

  Bertrand Russell

  Sex, Children, Lying

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

• Love, children, and work, are the great sources of fertilizing contact between the individual and the rest of the world.

  Bertrand Russell

  Children, Parent, World

• Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts.

  Bertrand Russell

  Christian, Hands, Two

  Bertrand Russell (1957). “Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

• No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor, but honest.

  Bertrand Russell

  Dog, Animal, Parent

• If throughout your life you abstain from murder, theft, fornication, perjury, blasphemy, and disrespect toward your parents, church, and your king, you are conventionally held to deserve moral admiration even if you have never done a single kind, generous or useful action. This very inadequate notion of virtue is an outcome of taboo morality, and has done untold harm.

  Bertrand Russell

  Kings, Parent, Disrespect

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Human Society in Ethics and Politics”, p.27, Routledge

• Thee might observe incidentally that if the state paid for child-bearing it might and ought to require a medical certificate that the parents were such as to give a reasonable result of a healthy child -- this would afford a very good inducement to some sort of care for the race, and gradually as public opinion became educated by the law, it might react on the law and make that more stringent, until one got to some state of things in which there would be a little genuine care for the race, instead of the present haphazard higgledy-piggledy ways.

  Bertrand Russell

  Children, Race, Law

  Bertrand Russell, Nicholas Griffin (2002). “The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Private Years, 1884-1914”, p.125, Psychology Press

• Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion go hand in hand.

  Bertrand Russell

  Atheist, Fear, Hands

  Bertrand Russell (1993). “The Quotable Bertrand Russell”

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