Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent.
Bertrand Russell Quotes
Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love.
To us it seems that West-European civilization is civilization, but this is a narrow view.
Civilized life has altogether grown too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide a harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting. In Australia, where people are few, and rabbits are many, I watched the whole populace satisfying the primitive impulse in the primitive manner by the […]
Then Christ teachings, which I think has a great deal in it, but I do not find that it is very popular among some of our Christian friends. He says, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that which thou hast, and give to the poor. That is a very excellent maxim, but, as […]
Love, children, and work are the great sources of fertilizing contact between the individual and the rest of the world.
I can remember, at the age of five, being told that childhood was the happiest period of life (a blank lie, in those days). I wept inconsolably, wished I were dead, and wondered how I should endure the boredom of the years to come.
There should be no enforced respect for grown-ups. We cannot prevent children from thinking us fools by merely forbidding them to utter their thoughts; in fact, they are more likely to think ill of us if they dare not say so.
A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matters, which is causing anxiety. Our doings are not so important as we naturally suppose; our successes and failures do not after all matter very much.
Change is one thing, progress is another. Change is scientific, progress is ethical; change is indisputable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
