Bertrand Russell Quotes About Passion

• The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.

  Bertrand Russell

  Passion, Opinion, Critical Thinking

  Sceptical Essays "Introduction: On the Value of Skepticism" (1961)

• Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

  Bertrand Russell

  Life, Strong, Fear

  Autobiography prologue (1967)

• When there are rational grounds for an opinion, people are content to set them forth and wait for them to operate. In such cases, people do not hold their opinions with passion; they hold them calmly, and set forth their reasons quietly. The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction.

  Bertrand Russell

  Fear, Passion, People

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “Sceptical Essays”, p.3, Psychology Press

• It is the things for which there is no evidence that are believed with passion.

  Bertrand Russell

  Passion, Religion, Evidence

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Fact and Fiction”, p.63, Routledge

• 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

• Life seems to me essentially passion, conflict, rage. It is only intellect that keeps me sane; perhaps this makes me overvalue intellect against feeling.

  Bertrand Russell

  Passion, Feelings, Conflict

  Letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell in 1912. "The life of Bertrand Russell". Book by Ronald W. Clark, p. 174, 1975.

• 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

• Ideas and principles that do harm are as a rule, though not always, cloaks for evil passions.

  Bertrand Russell

  Passion, Ideas, Evil

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.143, Routledge

• I believe myself that romantic love is the source of the most intense delights that life has to offer. In the relation of a man and woman who love each other with passion and imagination and tenderness, there is something of inestimable value, to be ignorant of which is a great misfortune to any human being.

  Bertrand Russell

  Life, Believe, Passion

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Marriage and Morals”, p.46, Routledge

• With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway about the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

  Bertrand Russell

  Stars, Passion, Heart

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

• 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 feel as if one would only discover on one's death-bed what one ought to have lived for, and realise too late that one's life has been wasted. Any passionate and courageous life seems good in itself, yet one feels that some element of delusion is involved in giving so much passion to any humanly attainable object. And so irony creeps into the very springs of one's being.

  Bertrand Russell

  Spring, Passion, Giving

  Bertrand Russell (2014). “The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell”, p.232, Routledge

• Politics is concerned with herds rather than with individuals, and the passions which are important in politics are, therefore, those in which the various members of a given herd can feel alike.

  Bertrand Russell

  Passion, Important, Individual

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “Human Society in Ethics and Politics”, p.172, Routledge

• There may be no good reasons for very many opinions that are held with passion.

  Bertrand Russell

  Passion, May, Opinion

• Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos [mathematics], where pure thought can dwell in its natural home.

  Bertrand Russell

  Passion, Home, Cosmos

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Mysticism and Logic”, p.94, Bertrand Russell

• Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions; do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age.

  Bertrand Russell

  Passion, Age, World

  Bertrand Russell (2013). “Mortals and Others, Volume I: American Essays 1931-1935”, p.149, Routledge

• Meantime, the world in which we exist has other aims. But it will pass away, burnt up in the fire of its own hot passions; and from its ashes will spring a new and younger world, full of fresh hope, woth the light of morning in its eyes.

  Bertrand Russell

  Morning, Spring, Eye

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

You May Also Like:

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Gottlob Frege

Alfred North Whitehead

David Hume

Russell Crowe

G. H. Hardy

Immanuel Kant