We need a morality based upon love of life, upon pleasure in growth and positive achievement, not upon repression and prohibition.
Bertrand RussellThose who defend traditional morality will sometimes admit that it is not perfect, but contend that any criticism will make all morality crumble.
Bertrand RussellAmong ourselves (Westerners), the people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forgo ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
Bertrand RussellNext to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power. Consequently those who live under the dominion of Puritanism become exceedingly desirous of power. Now love of power does far more harm than love of drink or any of the other vices against which Puritans protest. Of course, in virtuous people love of power camouflages itself as love of doing good, but this makes very little difference to its social effects. It merely means that we punish our victims for being wicked, instead of for being our enemies. In either case, tyranny and war result. Moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modern world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda.
Bertrand RussellMost men think that in framing their political opinions they are actuated by desire for the public good; but 9 times out of 10 a man’s politics can be predicted from the way in which he makes a living. This has led some people to maintain, and many more to believe practically, that in such matters it is impossible to be objective, and that no method is possible except a tug-of-war between classes with opposite bias.
Bertrand RussellLife cannot remain tolerable unless we learn to let each other alone in all matters that are not of immediate and obvious concern to the community. We must learn to respect each other’s privacy, and not to impose our moral standards upon each other. The Puritan imagines that his moral standard is THE moral standard; he does not realize that other ages and other countries, and even other groups in his own country, have moral standard different from his, to which they have as good a right as he has to his.
Bertrand RussellThe bulk of the population of every country is persuaded that all marriage customs other than its own are immoral, and that those who combat this view only do so in order to justify their own loose lives.
Bertrand RussellIt may be laid down broadly that irrationalism, i.e., disbelief in objective fact, arises almost always from the desire to assert something for which there is no evidence, or to deny something for which there is very good evidence.
Bertrand RussellThe extent to which beliefs are based upon evidence is very much less than believers suppose. Take the kind of action which is most nearly rational: the investment of money by a rich City man. You will often find that his view (say) on the question whether the French franc will go up or down depends upon his political sympathies, and yet is so strongly held that he is prepared to risk money on it.
Bertrand RussellPoliticians do not find any attractions in a view which does not lend itself to party declamation, and ordinary mortals prefer views which attribute misfortune to the machinations of their enemies.
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