Some quotes from Bertrand Russell

[Marulus]

I put this selection of quotes by the (infamous) Betrand Russell in the history section, because some of the ideas outlined here had a great deal of influence on policies pursued by various Western governmets of the 20th century, especially of the British Empire.

Lord Bertrand Russell, the Satanic Malthusian

Writings of Lord Bertrand Russell

1.0 Russell on Overpopulation and Genocide

Lord Bertrand Russell, of the British Empire, wrote: "At present the population of the world is increasing at about 58,000 per diem. War, so far, has had no very great effect on this increase, which continued throughout each of the world wars.. War has hitherto been disappointing in this respect.but perhaps bacteriological war may prove effective. If a Black Death could spread throughout the world once in every generation, survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full. The state of affairs might be unpleasant, but what of it?"

From Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science On Society (Routledge Press: New York, 1951).
He takes up the same theme throughout many of his prolific writings, throughout his regrettably long life.

2.0 Russell the racist

The following is a short quotation from Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals (1929), the chapter titled "Eugenics": "In extreme cases there can be little doubt of the superiority of one race to another.... It seems on the whole fair to regard negroes as on the average inferior to white men, although for work in the tropics they are indispensible, so that their extermination (apart from questions of humanity) would be highly undesirable."

3.0 Russell on the ridiculous fallacy of "Limited Natural Resources"; Bertrand Russell in his 1951 essay "The Impact of Science on Society"

"Science can abolish poverty and excessive hours of labor. In the earliest human communities, before agriculture, subsistence was precarious, and death from starvation must have been frequent. At that stage, man had the same mixture of misery and carefree enjoyment as still makes up the lives of other animals. Agriculture was a technical advance. The way it was used should be an awful warning to our age. it introduced slavery and serfdom, human sacrifice, absolute monarchy and large wars. Both industry and agriculture, to a continually increasing degree, are carried on in ways that waste the world's capital of mmaterial resources.
The indisputable fact is that industry and agriculture, insofar as it is used to make artificial fertilizers, depend upon irreplaceable materials and sources of energy. If bad times come, it must be inferred that industrialization characteristic of the last 150 years will be rudely checked..."

"The atom bomb and still more the hydrogen bomb have caused new fears involving new doubts as to the effects of science on human life. If, however, the human race decides to let itself go on living, it will have to make a very drastic change in its way of thinking, feeling and behaving. We must learn to not say 'Better death than dishonor.'"

4.0 Russell on Occult Practices in his Life

According to his Autobiography: Russell had an absolutely miserable childhood, which misery, in later life he did everything in his power to transfer to others. His family was so evil and tortured him so as a child, that he wrote, "I began to despise my people, chiefly because of their extreme horror of slang and their absurd notion that it was dangerous to climb trees." Quite a profound reason to despise one's family!!

By the age of 18, he became a committed atheist, answering the (in itself absurd) question, "Who made God?" with "In the beginning was matter, and matter begat the devil, and the devil begat God." By now an open Satanist, Russell describes himself, "...on moonlight nights I used to career round the country in a state of temporary lunacy. The reason, of course, was sexual desire...." or "Having been reading pantheism, I announced to my friends that I was God. They placed candles on each side of me and proceeded to acts of mock worship." Satan worship, himself being Satan.

When his dentist told him that he might have cancer, "...my first reaction was to congratulate the Deity on having got me after all just as happiness seemed in sight. I suppose that in some underground part of me I BELIEVED IN A DEITY WHOSE PLEASURE CONSISTS OF INGENIOUS TORTURE." Russell spent a great deal of his time contemplating suicide, and he openly admitted his hatred of humanity, "The sea, the stars, the night wind in waste places, mean more to me than even the human beings I love best, and I am conscious that HUMAN AFFECTION IS TO ME AT BOTTOM AN ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE FROM THE VAIN SEARCH FOR GOD." He wrote in a letter to a friend in 1903, "...nothing stirs me, nothing seems worth doing or worth having done: the only thing that I strongly FEEL worth while would be to murder as many people as possible so as to diminish the amount of consciousness in the world."

As a master of policy-making for the evil elites of the world, he admitted, "I want actually to CHANGE people's thoughts. POWER OVER PEOPLE'S MINDS IS THE MAIN PERSONAL DESIRE OF MY LIFE; and this sort of power is not acquired by saying popular things."

In Russell's own words, to sum up the driving force of his world view, "... when I am alone and idle, I cannot conceal for myself that my life has no purpose .... I hate the world and almost all the people in it.... I hate the planet and the human race--I am ashamed to belong to such a species." It is the same quality of evil which we confront today.

5.0 On the End of Nation-States Bertrand Russell, writing in the {Bulletin of Atomic Scientists} (the famous Oct. 1946 article)

"There is only one way in which great wars can be permanently prevented, and that is the establishment of an international government, and I mean one that really governs, not the fraud of the League of Nations or the United Nations, but one with power to govern. There is one other method by which in theory the peace of the world could be secured, and that is the supremacy of one nation or one closely allied group of nations.

By this method, Rome secured the peace of the Mediterranean area for several centuries. America at this moment, if it were bellicose and imperialistic could compel the rest of the world to disarm, and establish a worldwide monopoly of American armed forces.

But the country has no wish for such enterprises. And in a few years, the opportunmity will be gone. In the near future a world war, however terrible, would probably end in American victory without the destruction of civilization in the Western Hemisphere. An American victory would no doubt lead to a world government under the hegemony of the United States, a result which for my part I should welcome with enthusiasm."

6.0 Russell the Satanist

The most remarkable aspect of Russell's entire endeavor is this. Throughout his labor of hatred, the ostensible standpoint is that of unbending, unyielding attack, attack, attack on every facet of religious belief. He will dissolve even the most deeply ingrained of religious "superstitions" in the acid bath of his logical constructions. But there is a certain passage in which Russell makes his one and only concession to a CERTAIN KIND of religious doctrine, and it is reproduced verbatim here because it is so luridly revealing of his actual outlook:

"If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must say that right and wrong have some meaning independant of God's fiat, because God's fiats are good and not bad independantly of the mere fact that He made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God. You could of course, if you liked, say that there was a superior deity to the God who made this world, or could take up the line of the gnostics--a line which I often thought was a 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." (Emphasis added.)

Well, well! Our High Priest of Free-Thinking Atheism has at last found a fundamental point of agreement with a branch of theism--and what a branch it is!

[source]

[Theobald]

Wasn't Bertrand Russell a friend of Sartre, and an anti-American socialist as well as a humanist and anti-war activist ?
I am lost... Or this is not the same Bertrand Russell ?

[Errigal]

It's the same one. Unfortunately he is very influential in the English-speaking world.

[Marulus]

Originally Posted by Theobald

Wasn't Bertrand Russell a friend of Sartre, and an anti-American socialist as well as a humanist and anti-war activist ?
I am lost... Or this is not the same Bertrand Russell ?

Yes, it is the same Bertrand Russell.

We shouldn't be fooled by the apparent "anti-Americanism" of certain apostles of the ideology of modern world. Very often it is just a so-called interior, controlled opposition. There is a kind of "anti-Americanism" (especially that of the European left) is very American in nature because it speaks from the positions of the American ideal. They criticise America for not living up to its ideal, for not being "enough American."

As we can see, sir Russell criticised wars considering it as an antiquated and bad means to achieve goals. He proposed such measures like spreading disease instead.

[magister]

I had no idea Russell was this evil. I've read some of his books including A History of Western Philosophy. I really had no idea that he was his full of hatred for humanity and was an imperialist and a racist.

[Gnist]

Reading about him as a person was in part a revolting experience. But I think it would be foolish to deny his philosophical merits. What I enjoyed the most from him was some examples offered on paradox in his great work on logic and mathematics.

[Marulus]

Originally Posted by Gnist

Reading about him as a person was in part a revolting experience. But I think it would be foolish to deny his philosophical merits. What I enjoyed the most from him was some examples offered on paradox in his great work on logic and mathematics.

No contradiction here. I do not deny his philosophical merits. One can be a great mathematician and philosopher and at the same time a scumbag on other accounts.

[Gnist]

Originally Posted by Marulus

No contradiction here. I do not deny his philosophical merits. One can be a great mathematician and philosopher and at the same time a scumbag on other accounts.

I don't know if someone can be a great philosopher and a scumbag - I tend to think of magnitude in terms of virtue - but someone can have certain skills and merits although being a pityful soul or even rather nasty.

[Marulus]

Originally Posted by Gnist

I don't know if someone can be a great philosopher and a scumbag - I tend to think of magnitude in terms of virtue

Yes, of course, I stand corrected. I did not express myself properly. A philosopher - if he is to be a truely great philosopher - must pursue virtue as well. Intellectual skills alone don't suffice.

In fact, I wanted to say that someone can both possess great intellectual skills and be a scumbag in the moral sphere. Wherefrom it could be deduced that he does not use his intellectual skills properly.