'Vagueness' http://www.personal.kent.edu/~rmuhamma/Philosophy/RBwritings/vagueness.htm, first published in The Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy, 1 June, 1923 <br class="br">1920s

“In democratic countries, the most important private organizations are economic. Unlike secret societies, they are able to exercize their terrorism without illegality, since they do not threaten to kill their enemies, but only to starve them.”

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Bertrand Russell

Fonte: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 12: Powers and forms of governments

“…You could take up the line that some of the gnostics took up – a line which I often thought was a very plausible one – that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.”

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Bertrand Russell

"The Moral Arguments for Deity"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)

“To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.”

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Bertrand Russell

Fonte: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 18: The Taming of Power

“There was once a millionaire who bought an infinite number of pairs of shoes and, whenever he bought a pair of shoes, he also bought a pair of socks. We can make a selection choosing one out of each pair of shoes, because we can choose always the right shoe or always the left shoe. Thus, so far as the shoes are concerned, selections exist. But, as regards the socks, where there is no distinction of right and left, we cannot use this rule of selection.”

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Bertrand Russell

Fonte: 1950s, My Philosophical Development (1959), pp. 93-93

“Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business.”

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Bertrand Russell

Letter to Gilbert Murray, December 28, 1902
1900s

“I think if I had met him [Lenin] without knowing who he was, I should not have guessed that he was a great man; he struck me as too opinionated and narrowly orthodox. His strength comes, I imagine, from his honesty, courage, and unwavering faith—religious faith in the Marxian gospel, which takes the place of the Christian martyr's hopes of Paradise, except that it is less egotistical… I went to Russia a Communist; but contact with those who have no doubts has intensified a thousandfold my own doubts, not as to Communism in itself, but as to the wisdom of holding a creed so firmly that for its sake men are willing to inflict widespread misery.”

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Bertrand Russell

Part I, Ch. 3: Lenin, Trotsky and Gorky
1920s, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920)

“The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.”

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Bertrand Russell

1910s, Political Ideals (1917)

“It is obvious that "obscenity" is not a term capable of exact legal definition; in the practice of the Courts, it means "anything that shocks the magistrate."”

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Bertrand Russell

Fonte: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 10: Recrudescence of Puritanism

“I shall keep it [the manuscript] by me until the end of May for purposes of revision, and of adding malicious foot-notes.”

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Bertrand Russell

Letter to W. W. Norton, 17 February, 1931
1930s

“We thus have a kind of see-saw: first, pure persuasion leading to the conversion of a minority; then force exerted to secure that the rest of the community shall be exposed to the right propaganda; and finally a genuine belief on the part of the great majority, which makes the use of force again unnecessary.”

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Bertrand Russell

Fonte: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 9: Power over opinion

“There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

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Bertrand Russell

1950s, The Russell-Einstein Manifesto (1955)

“It is sometimes maintained that racial mixture is biologically undesirable. There is no evidence whatever for this view. Nor is there, apparently, any reason to think that Negroes are congenitally less intelligent than white people, but as to that it will be difficult to judge until they have equal scope and equally good social conditions.”

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Bertrand Russell

1950s, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951)

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

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Bertrand Russell

Letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell in 1912, as quoted in Clark The life of Bertrand Russell (1976), p. 174
1910s