Bertrand Russell citáty

strana 17

„Základní příčinou potíží je to, že v moderním světě jsou hloupí sebejistí, zatímco inteligentní jsou plní pochybností.“

„Nebojte se být výstřední ve svých názorech, protože každý názor, který byl nyní přijat, byl kdysi výstřední.“

„Existují dva motivy pro čtení knihy: jeden, protože se vám líbí; druhý, že se tím můžete chlubit.“

„Nikdy bych za svou víru nezemřel, protože bych se mohl mýlit.“

„Ať už se to týká čehokoliv, nezaškodí občas popřemýšlet i nad věcmi, které jsme dlouho považovali za samozřejmé.“

„Skutečně uspokojivé štěstí je doprovázeno co nejplnějším uplatněním našich schopností a co nejplnějším poznáním světa, v němž žijeme.“

„Bát se lásky znamená bát se života a ti, kdo se života bojí, jsou již ze tří čtvrtin mrtvi.“

„Kdybych žil ještě jednou, dopustil bych se stejných hloupostí a chyb, ale snažil bych se je udělat dřív.“

„Pokládám lásku za jednu z nejdůležitějších věcí v lidském životě. Láska je mnohem více než touha po pohlavním styku, je hlavním východiskem z osamělosti.“

„Většina lidí raději umře, než aby myslela. A přinejmenším jednou v životě to i udělají.“

„Nejvíc utrpení způsobil člověk člověku proto, že byl přesvědčen o věcech, které se ukázaly být nepravdivé.“

„Málokteří lidé mohou být šťastni, aniž by nenáviděli nějakou osobu, národ nebo tvora.“

„Moudrý člověk přemítá o svých strastech jen tehdy, když to potřebuje, v jiných případech myslí na jiné věci.“

„V dobách, kdy náboženství bylo ještě na vrcholu své slávy, mělo slovo "bůh" dokonale přesný význam, avšak v důsledku útoků ze strany racionalistů stával se tento pojem stále mlhavější a vybledlejší, až se dnes těžko pozná, co vlastně lidé mají na mysli, když prohlašují, že věří v boha.“

„Musel jsem se dívat na to, že lidem příliš nezáleží na vlastním přežití nebo na přežití celého lidstva, jako spíše na zničení svého protivníka.“

„Válka neurčuje na čí straně je pravda - jenom kdo zbyde.“

„Historie světa je souhrn událostí, kterým se bylo možno vyhnout.“

„Válka je iracionálním následkem pýchy, nudy a chamtivosti.“

„Jsou-li všichni odborníci zajedno, je na místě opatrnost.“

„Jsem přesvědčen, že vědecké poznání je jedním z vrcholů lidského úsilí. Netvrdím, že poznání nemůže nikdy způsobit zlo. Tvrdím však, a to velmi důrazně, že poznání neporovnatelně častěji přináší užitek než škodu, a strach z poznání je mnohem škodlivější.“

„Život je břímě, když ti, které máme rádi, mají jiné, jež staví na první místo. Když nemáme na světě koutek, do něhož můžeme utéct se svou osamělostí.“

„Leckdo vděčí za své úspěchy radám, jichž neuposlechl.“

„Naneštěstí je pro přetížené učitele takřka nemožné zachovat si instinktivní náklonnost k dětem| postupně k nim nabudou tytéž pocity jako cukrářský učeň ke kremrolím.“

„Jestliže je moudrost v životě zbraní, hloupost obvykle bývá dobrým pacientem.“

„Aristoteles se domníval, že ženy mají méně zubů než muži; ač byl dvakrát ženat, nikdy mu nenapadlo se podívat.“

„Chtěl bych, aby někdo zakopal válečnou sekeru a zapomněl, kde leží.“

„Vědci se snaží přeměnit nemožné na možné. Politici často zase chtějí přeměnit možné v nemožné.“

„Matematika se popravdě řečeno nepyšní pouze pravdivostí, ale také svrchovanou krásu - krásou chladnou a strohou, jakou nalézáme u soch; krásou, jež se neodvolává k žádné slabé stránce naší přirozenosti; krásou bez zbytečného pozlátka, které je běžné v hudbě či malířství - a přesto vznešeně čistou a stroze dokonalou, takovou, již se pyšní jen největší umělecká díla.“

„Základem demokracie je závist.“

„Moderní humor, to je někdy skrývané zoufalství.“

„Základní chyba otců: očekávají od svých dětí, že jim budou dělat čest.“

„Příliš málo svobody přináší stagnaci, příliš mnoho chaos.“

„Dobrý život je inspirován láskou a řízený vědomostmi.“

„Vlastenectví je ochota zabíjet a nechat se zabít z triviálních důvodů.“

„Ve filosofii jde o to začít s něčím tak jednoduchým, až se zdá, že to nestojí za řeč, a skončit něčím tak paradoxním, že tomu nikdo nechce věřit.“

„Život není nic víc než soutěž o to být raději zločincem než obětí.“

„Člověk by měl zpravidla dbát veřejného mínění jen tolik, kolik musí, aby neumřel hladem a nedostal se do vězení, ale vše, co sahá dále, je dobrovolné podřizování zbytečnému tyranství…“

„Když se do lásky míchá majetek, ztrácí svou životodárnou moc a stravuje osobnost.“

„Jste největšími pokrytci, jaké svět kdy poznal. Dovoláváte se hodnot, jimiž pohrdáte a po nichž bezohledně a cynicky šlapete“

„Když si člověk připustí, že nic není jisté, tak musí, podle mého názoru, také připustit, že některé věci jsou daleko více jisté než jiné.“

„Ze všech forem opatrnosti, je opatrnost v lásce nejvíce osudná opravdovému štěstí.“

„Strach je hlavním zdrojem pověr a jedním z hlavních zdrojů krutosti. Dobýt strach je začátek moudrosti.“

„Překonání strachu je počátkem moudrosti.“

„A kdyby Bůh existoval, považuji za velmi nepravděpodobné, že by byl tak nepokojně ješitný a urážel se na ty, kdo o jeho existenci pochybují.“

„Čas, který promarníte a nevadí vám, že ho promarníte, není promarněný čas.“

“Children must be under authority, and are themselves aware that they must be, although they like to play a game of rebellion at times. The case of children is unique in the fact that those who have authority over them are sometimes fond of them. Where this is the case, the children do not resent the authority in general, even when they resist it on particular occasions. Education authorities, as opposed to teachers, have not this merit, and do in fact sacrifice the children to what they consider the good of the State by teaching them "patriotism," i. e., a willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.”

“Dread of disaster makes everybody act in the very way that increases the disaster. Psychologically the situation is analogous to that of people trampled to death when there is a panic in a theatre caused by a cry of 'Fire!' In the situation that existed in the great depression, things could only be set right by causing the idle plant to work again. But everybody felt that to do so was to risk almost certain loss. Within the framework of classical economics there was no solution. Roosevelt saved the situation by bold and heretical action. He spent billions of public money and created a huge public debt, but by so doing he revived production and brought his country out of the depression. Businessmen, who in spite of such a sharp lesson continued to believe in old-fashioned economics, were infinitely shocked, and although Roosevelt saved them from ruin, they continued to curse him and to speak of him as 'the madman in the White House.”

“The first thing to realize, if you wish to become a philosopher, is that most people go through life with a whole world of beliefs that have no sort of rational justification, and that one man's world of beliefs is apt to be incompatible with another man's, so that they cannot both be right. People's opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people is a secondary consideration.”

“What modern apologists call 'true' Christianity is something depending upon a very selective process. It ignores much that is to be found in the Gospels: for example, the parable of the sheep and the goats, and the doctrine that the wicked will suffer eternal torment in Hell fire. It picks out certain parts of the Sermon on the Mount, though even these it often rejects in practice. It leaves the doctrine of non-resistance, for example, to be practised only by non-Christians such as Gandhi. The precepts that it particularly favours are held to embody such a lofty morality that they must have had a divine origin. And yet … these precepts were uttered by Jews before the time of Christ.”

“My abandonment of former beliefs was, however, never complete. Some things remained with me, and still remain: I still think that truth depends upon a relation to fact, and that facts in general are nonhuman; I still think that man is cosmically unimportant, and that a Being, if there were one, who could view the universe impartially, without the bias of here and now, would hardly mention man, except perhaps in a footnote near the end of the volume; but I no longer have the wish to thrust out human elements from regions where they belong; I have no longer the feeling that intellect is superior to sense, and that only Plato's world of ideas gives access to the 'real' world. I used to think of sense, and of thought which is built on sense, as a prison from which we can be freed by thought which is emancipated from sense. I now have no such feelings. I think of sense, and of thoughts built on sense, as windows, not as prison bars. I think that we can, however imperfectly, mirror the world, like Leibniz's monads; and I think it is the duty of the philosopher to make himself as undistorting a mirror as he can. But it is also his duty to recognize such distortions as are inevitable from our very nature. Of these, the most fundamental is that we view the world from the point of view of the here and now, not with that large impartiality which theists attribute to the Deity. To achieve such impartiality is impossible for us, but we can travel a certain distance towards it. To show the road to this end is the supreme duty of the philosopher.”

“In a logically perfect language, there will be one word and no more for every simple object, and everything that is not simple will be expressed by a combination of words, by a combination derived, of course, from the words for the simple things that enter in, one word for each simple component.”

“[The church] is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy."”

“[Freedom] is the greatest of political goods. I do not say freedom is the greatest of all goods: the best things come from within—they are such things as creative art, and love, and thought. Such things can be helped or hindered by political conditions, but not actually produced by them; and freedom is, both in itself and in its relation to these other goods the best thing that political and economic conditions can secure.”

“If, when a man writes a poem or commits a murder, the bodily movements involved in his act result solely from physical causes, it would seem absurd to put up a statue to him in the one case and to hang him in the other.”

“Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.”

“To those who inquire as to the purpose of mathematics, the usual answer will be that it facilitates the making of machines, the travelling from place to place, and the victory over foreign nations, whether in war or commerce. … The reasoning faculty itself is generally conceived, by those who urge its cultivation, as merely a means for the avoidance of pitfalls and a help in the discovery of rules for the guidance of practical life.”

“The great majority of men and women, in ordinary times, pass through life without ever contemplating or criticising, as a whole, either their own conditions or those of the world at large. They find themselves born into a certain place in society, and they accept what each day brings forth, without any effort of thought beyond what the immediate present requires. Almost as instinctively as the beasts of the field, they seek the satisfaction of the needs of the moment, without much forethought, and without considering that by sufficient effort the whole conditions of their lives could be changed.”

“The state is primarily an organization for killing foreigners.”

“Take the question whether other people exist. …It is plain that it makes for happiness to believe that they exist – for even the greatest misanthropist would not wish to be deprived of the objects of his hate. Hence the belief that other people exist is, pragmatically, a true belief. But if I am troubled by solipsism, the discovery that a belief in the existence of others is 'true' in the pragmatist's sense is not enough to allay my sense of loneliness: the perception that I should profit by rejecting solipsism is not alone sufficient to make me reject it. For what I desire is not that the belief in solipsism should be false in the pragmatic sense, but that other people should in fact exist. And with the pragmatist's meaning of truth, these two do not necessarily go together. The belief in solipsism might be false even if I were the only person or thing in the universe.”

“We invite this Congress, and through it the scientists of the world and the general public, to subscribe to the following resolution:
"In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them."”

“Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.”

“The Chinese are a great nation, incapable of permanent suppression by foreigners. They will not consent to adopt our vices in order to acquire military strength; but they are willing to adopt our virtues in order to advance in wisdom. I think they are the only people in the world who quite genuinely believe that wisdom is more precious than rubies. That is why the West regards them as uncivilized.”

“It is entirely clear that there is only one way in which great wars can be permanently prevented, and that is the establishment of an international government with a monopoly of serious armed force.”

“The world would be a happier place than it is if acquisitiveness were always stronger than rivalry. But in fact, a great many men will cheerfully face impoverishment if they can thereby secure complete ruin for their rivals. Hence the present level of taxation.
Vanity is a motive of immense potency. Anyone who has much to do with children knows how they are constantly performing some antic, and saying "Look at me." "Look at me" is one of the most fundamental desires of the human heart. It can take innumerable forms, from buffoonery to the pursuit of posthumous fame.”

“The camera is as subjective as we are.”

“Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos.”

“No rules, however wise, are a substitute for affection and tact.”

“I believe that Communism is necessary to the world, and I believe that the heroism of Russia has fired men's hopes in a way which was essential to the realization of Communism in the future. Regarded as a splendid attempt, without which ultimate success would have been very improbable, Bolshevism deserves the gratitude and admiration of all the progressive part of mankind.”

“Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.”

“An irrational fear should never be simply let alone, but should be gradually overcome by familiarity with its fainter forms.”

“The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.”

“Whatever happens, I cannot be a silent witness to murder or torture. Anyone who is a partner in this is a despicable individual. I am sorry I cannot be moderate about it…”

“It seems to me that science has a much greater likelihood of being true in the main than any philosophy hitherto advanced (I do not, of course, except my own). In science there are many matters about which people are agreed; in philosophy there are none. Therefore, although each proposition in a science may be false, and it is practically certain that there are some that are false, yet we shall be wise to build our philosophy upon science, because the risk of error in philosophy is pretty sure to be greater than in science. If we could hope for certainty in philosophy, the matter would be otherwise, but so far as I can see such a hope would be chimerical.”

“I cannot escape from the conclusion that the great ages of progress have depended upon a small number of individuals of transcendent ability.”