Bertrand Russell Quotes About Tyranny

• The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.

  Bertrand Russell

  Intelligent, Men, Emotional

  Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Peter Köllner (1996). “A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42”, p.441, Psychology Press

• Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

  Bertrand Russell

  Exercise, Liberty, Principles

  Bertrand Russell (1960). “Sceptical Essays”

• One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

  Bertrand Russell

  Respect, Humor, Public Opinion

  "The Conquest of Happiness".

• Scientific societies are as yet in their infancy. It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished.

  Bertrand Russell

  Country, School, Thinking

• Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possiblities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what the may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familar things in an unfamilar aspect

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Feelings, Doubt

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Problems of Philosophy”, p.124, Lulu.com

• It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know-or care-about circumstances in the colonies.

  Bertrand Russell

  Tyrants, Citizens, Care

• In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces; but in thought, in aspiration, we are free, free from our fellowmen, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the tyranny of death.

  Bertrand Russell

  Desire, Body, Action

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “Why I Am Not a Christian”, p.35, Lulu Press, Inc

• Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Doubt, Answers

  Bertrand Russell (2016). “The Problems of Philosophy”, p.207, Bertrand Russell

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