Bertrand Russell Good Bad Evil Quotes

To the primitive mind, everything is either friendly or hostile; but experience has shown that friendliness and hostility are not the conceptions by which the world is to be understood. ~ Bertrand Russell

The deeply irrational attitude of each sex toward women may be seen in novels, particularly in bad novels. In bad novels by men, there is the woman with whom the author is in love, who usually possesses every charm, but is somewhat helpless, and requires male protection; sometimes, however, like Shakespeare's Cleopatra, she is an object of exasperated hatred, and is thought to be deeply and desperately wicked. In portraying the heroine, the male author does not write from observation, but merely objectifies his own emotions. In regard to his other female characters, he is more objective, and may even depend upon his notebook; but when he is in love, his passion makes a mist between him and the object of his devotion. Women novelists, also, have two kinds of women in their books. One is themselves, glamorous and kind, and object of lust to the wicked and of love to the good, sensitive, highsouled, and constantly misjudged. The other kind is represented by all other women, and is usually portrayed as petty, spiteful, cruel, and deceitful. It would seem that to judge women without bias is not easy either for men or for women. ~ Bertrand Russell

Your writing is never as good as you hoped; but never as bad as you feared. ~ Bertrand Russell

Good and bad, and even the higher good that mysticism finds everywhere, are the reflections of our own emotions on other things, not part of the substance of things as they are in themselves. ~ Bertrand Russell

True progress begins with something no knowledge economy can produce: wisdom about what it means to live well. We have to do what great thinkers like John Stuart Mill, Bertrand Russell, and John Maynard Keynes were already advocating 100 years ago: to "value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful." We have to direct our minds to the future. To stop consuming our own discontent through polls and the relentlessly bad news media. To consider alternatives and form new collectives. To transcend this confining zeitgeist and recognize our shared idealism. ~ Rutger Bregman

In his youth, Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry and had a natural daughter. At this period, he was a bad man. Then he became good, abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles and wrote bad poetry. ~ Bertrand Russell

A physicist looks for causes; that does not necessarily imply that there are causes everywhere. A man may look for gold without assuming that there is gold everywhere; if he finds gold, well and good, if he doesn't he's had bad luck. The same is true when the physicists look for causes. ~ Bertrand Russell

We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world - its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and not be afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create. ~ Bertrand Russell

Man is a rational animal - so at least I have been told. ... Aristotle, so far as I know, was the first man to proclaim explicitly that man is a rational animal. His reason for this view was ... that some people can do sums. ... It is in virtue of the intellect that man is a rational animal. The intellect is shown in various ways, but most emphatically by mastery of arithmetic. The Greek system of numerals was very bad, so that the multiplication table was quite difficult, and complicated calculations could only be made by very clever people. ~ Bertrand Russell

Bad philosophers may have a certain influence; good philosophers, never. ~ Bertrand Russell

It must be obvious that liberty necessarily means freedom to choose foolishly as well as wisely; freedom to choose evil as well as good; freedom to enjoy the rewards of good judgment, and freedom to suffer the penalties of bad judgment. If this is not true, the word "freedom" has no meaning. ~ Ben Moreell

Don't feel ashamed, girl," she said, answering my thoughts. "The truth is a noble grail to seek. But if you're after it, you must imagine, first, what it will mean to get it. The truth is neither good nor bad. It is above evil. Above morality. It doesn't offer anything besides itself." She nodded resolutely. "I'm proud I told Jackson the truth. I'm glad he died knowing who he was. ~ Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

The evil heart which still remaineth in the Christian, doth always, when it is not attacking or obstructing, still reign and dwell within him. My heart is just as bad when no evil emanates from it, as when it is all over vileness in its external developments. A volcano is ever a volcano; even when it sleeps, trust it not. A lion is a lion, even though he play like a kid; and a serpent, is a serpent, even though you may stroke it while for a season it slumbers; there is still a venom in its sting when its azure scales invite the eye. My heart, even though for an hour, it may not have had an evil thought, is still evil. If it were possible that I could live for days without a single temptation from my own heart to sin, it would be still just as evil as it was before; and it is always either displaying its vileness, or else preparing for another display. It is either loading its cannon to shoot against us, or else it is positively at warfare with us. You may rest assured that the heart is never other than it originally was; the evil nature is still evil; and when there is no blaze, it is heaping up the wood, wherewith it is to blaze another day. It is gathering up from my joys, from my devotions, from my holiness, and from all I do, some materials to attack me at some future period. The evil nature is only evil, and that continually, without the slightest mitigation or element of good. The new nature must always wrestle and fight with it; and when the two natures are not wrestli ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I wondered if we were put on this earth only to destroy every beautiful thing, to make chaos. Or were we meant to overcome this? Did bad things happen so that goodness could show through in people? ~ Silas House

Goodness has no opposite. Most of us consider goodness as the opposite of the bad or evil and so throughout history in any culture goodness has been considered the other face of that which is brutal. So man has always struggled against evil in order to be good; but goodness can never come into being if there is any form of violence or struggle. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Are the great spiritual teachings really advocating that we fight evil because we are on the side of light, the side of peace? Are they telling us to fight against that other 'undesirable' side, the bad and the black. That is a big question. If there is wisdom in the sacred teachings, there should not be any war. As long as a person is involved with warfare, trying to defend or attack, then his action is not sacred; it is mundane, dualistic, a battlefield situation. ~ Chogyam Trungpa

Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active. ~ Bertrand Russell

Good and bad exist always, everywhere ~ R. Alan Woods

There are no black and white, good or bad characters in 'Game Of Thrones,' but Joffrey was an exception. Just pure evil. ~ Sophie Turner

The world is filled with good, but it's equally overwhelmed with bad. People who commit horror and evil. You have to concentrate on what you can do, what you can influence. The ones who you can hunt down. ~ Robert Bryndza

Dear Pat,
You came upon me carving some kind of little figure out of wood and you said, 'Why don't you make something for me?'
I asked you what you wanted, and you said, 'A box.'
'What for?'
'To put things in.'
'What things?'
'Whatever you have,' you said.
Well, here's your box. Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts - the pleasures of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation.
And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you.
And still the box is not full.
John ~ John Steinbeck

You can't blame science for being used for evil purposes. What you can do is say, 'This is an exceedingly powerful tool.' And you want to make sure it is used for good purposes, not bad ones. That is a political decision. ~ Richard Dawkins

Hous vivons aux temps des assassins - "we live in days of assassins" - where evil is sought in lives more than good in order to justify a world with a bad conscience. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Every evil begets some good. ~ Voltaire

Must we believe those who tell us that a hand foul with the filth of a shameful life is the only one a young girl cares to be caressed by?

That is the teaching that is bawled out day by day from between those yellow covers. Do they ever pause to think, I wonder, those devil's lady-helps, what mischief they are doing crawling about God's garden, and telling childish Eves and silly Adams that sin is sweet, and that decency is ridiculous and vulgar? How many an innocent girl do they not degrade into an evil-minded woman? To how many a weak lad do they not point out the dirty by-path as the shortest cut to a maiden's heart? It is not as if they wrote of life as it really is. Speak truth, and right will take care of itself. But their pictures are coarse daubs painted from the sickly fancies of their own diseased imaginations.

We want to think of women not--as their own sex would show them--as Loreleis luring us to destruction, but as good angels beckoning us upward. They have more power for good or evil than they dream of. It is just at the very age when a man's character is forming that he tumbles into love, and then the lass he loves has the making or marring of him. Unconsciously he molds himself to what she would have him, good or bad. I am sorry to have to be ungallant enough to say that I do not think they always use their influence for the best. . . .

And yet, women, you could make us so much better, if you only would. It rests with you more ~ Jerome K. Jerome

I like stories of the classic hero, of good versus evil, the ones in which the good guys wear white and the bad guys wear black ... and I love a good sword fight. ~ Simon Sinek

Curtains always hide something, either the good or the bad! Their job is to hide! If you see a curtain covering up an evil, tear it down and throw it away! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

If God has given you a mission, you must be tough enough to handle what people say and still not be distracted while doing what you were created to do. Are you tough enough? God and the enemy know the truth about you, and remember even great people doing great things for great causes meet negative criticisms. All criticism is not bad, just like all flattery is not good. Many times people don't criticize you because they are evil; they do it because they have been trained to think anyone who doesn't perceive and see things in the same manner is an enemy. The critic is a prisoner to his own experiences and perspectives, erroneously believing his limited experiences are the sum of all truth. When you acknowledge your critics, you give them your power and validate their words. They are not important until you respond. ~ Bishop T. D. Jakes

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL: WHY UNCONDITIONALLY BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO UNCONDITIONALLY GOOD PEOPLE
They never do. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

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 understand - fussing about medicines instead of searching for wisdom.

I hate being all tidy like a book in a library where nobody reads – prison is horribly like that. ~ Bertrand Russell

There is a difference between what is wrong and what is evil. Evil is committed when clarity is taken away from what is clearly wrong, allowing wrong to be seen as less wrong, excusable, right, or an obligatory commandment of the Lord God Almighty.
Evil is bad sold as good, wrong sold as right, injustice sold as justice. Like the coat of a virus, a thin veil of right can disguise enormous wrong and confer an ability to infect others. ~ John Hartung

Communism has never concealed the fact that it rejects all absolute concepts of morality. It scoffs at any consideration of "good" and "evil" as indisputable categories. Communism considers morality to be relative, to be a class matter. Depending on circumstances and the political situation, any act, including murder, even the killing of hundreds of thousands, could be good or could be bad. It all depends on class ideology. And who defines this ideology? The whole class cannot get together to pass judgment. A handful of people determine what is good and what is bad. But I must say that in this respect Communism has been most successful. It has infected the whole world with the belief in the relativity of good and evil. Today, many people apart from the Communists are carried away by this idea. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Idealism is only bad if your ideals are bad – or if your ideals are good but your methods don't reflect them. ~ Starchild

In the contemporary world there are two classes of bad plans-the plans invented and put into practice by men who do not accept our ideal postulates, and the plans invented and put into practice by the men who accept them, but imagine that the ends proposed by the prophets can be achieved by wicked or unsuitable means. Hell is paved with good intentions, and it is probable that plans made by well-meaning people of the second class may have results no less disastrous than plans made by evil-intentioned people of the first class. Which only shows, yet once more, how right the Buddha was in classing unawareness and stupidity among the deadly sins. Let us consider a few examples of bad plans belonging to these two classes. In the first class we must place all Fascist and all specifically militaristic plans. Fascism, in the words of Mussolini, believes that "war alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it." Again, "a doctrine which is founded upon the harmful postulate of peace is hostile to Fascism." The Fascist, then, is one who believes that the bombardment of open towns with fire, poison and explosives (in other words, modern war) is intrinsically good. He is one who rejects the teaching of the prophets and believes that the best society is a national society living in a state of chronic hostility towards other national societies and preoccupied with ideas of rapine and slaughter. He is ~ Aldous Huxley