Bertrand Russell Quotes About Prejudice

• An Honest politician will not be tolerated by a democracy unless he is very stupid ... because only a very stupid man can honestly share the prejudices of more than half the nation.

  Bertrand Russell

  Stupid, Men, Cynical

  Bertrand Russell (1971). “Ladislas Reymont: Romain Rolland ; Bertrand Russell”

• We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think in fact they do so.

  Bertrand Russell

  Thinking, Views, Opposites

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Mortals and Others”, p.6, Routledge

• Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them.

  Bertrand Russell

  Clever, Stupid, Men

  "New Hopes for a Changing World". Part III: Man and Himself, Ch. 16: Ideas Which Have Become Obsolete, p. 158. Book by Bertrand Russell, 1951.

• What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.

  Bertrand Russell

  Time, Prejudice, Authority

  Bertrand Russell (2012). “The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell Volume 29: Détente or Destruction, 1955-57”, p.152, Routledge

• Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.

  Bertrand Russell

  Attitude, Believe, Mind

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Why I Am Not a Christian”, p.55, Lulu Press, Inc

• Education, and the life of the mind generally, is a matter in which individual initiative is the chief thing needed; the function of the state should begin and end with insistence on some kind of education, and, if possible, a kind which promotes mental individualism, not a kind which happens to conform to the prejudices of government officials.

  Bertrand Russell

  Government, Mind, Prejudice

  Bertrand Russell, Richard A. Rempel (1995). “Pacifism and Revolution, 1916-18”, p.261, Psychology Press

• We may say, in a broad way, that Greek philosophy down to Aristotle expresses the mentality appropriate to the City State; that Stoicism is appropriate to a cosmopolitan despotism; that stochastic philosophy is an intellectual expression of the Church as an organization; that philosophy since Descartes, or at any rate since Locke, tends to embody the prejudices of the commercial middle class; and that Marxism and Fascism are the philosophies appropriate to the modern industrial state.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Expression, Class

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