A good social system is not to be secured by making people unselfish, but, by making their own vital impulses fit in with other peoples. This is feasible. Those who have produced stoic philosophies have all had enough to eat and drink. I feel I shall find the truth on my deathbed and be surrounded by people too stupid to understandโfussing about medicines instead of searching for wisdom. I hate being all tidy like a book in a library where nobody reads โ prison is horribly like that.
Bertrand RussellMankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else.
Bertrand RussellMathematics is, I believe, the chief source of the belief in eternal and exact truth, as well as a sensible intelligible world.
Bertrand RussellMan is a rational animal โ so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favour of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents.
Bertrand RussellExperience has taught me a technique for dealing with such people [...] I counter the devotees of the Great Pyramid by adoration of the Sphinx; and the devotee of nuts by pointing out that hazelnuts and walnuts are as deleterious as other foods and only Brazil nuts should be tolerated. But when I was younger I had not yet acquired this technique, with the result that my contacts with cranks were sometimes alarming.
Bertrand Russell