Spirit of the Matter

             These four passions—acquisitiveness, vanity, rivalry, and love of power—are, after the basic instincts, the prime movers of almost all the happiness in politics. Their operation is intensified and regulated by the herd instinct. . . . Among men, as among other gregarious animals, the united action, in any given circumstances, is determined partly by the common passions of the herd, partly by imitation of leaders. The art of politics consists in causing the latter to prevail over the former. . . . Of the four passions we have enumerated, only one, namely acquisitiveness, is concerned at all directly with men’s relations to their material conditions. The other three—vanity, rivalry, and love of power—are concerned with social relations. I think this is the source of what is erroneous in the Marxian interpretation of history, which tacitly assumes that acquisitiveness is the source of all political actions.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 22.

            The prevention of free inquiry is unavoidable so long as the purpose of education is to produce belief rather than thought, to compel the young to hold positive opinions on doubtful matters rather than to let them see the doubtfulness and be encouraged to independence of mind. Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 26.

            In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces; but in thought, in aspiration, we are free from our fellowmen, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we are alive, from the tyranny of death. Let us learn, that energy of faith which enables us to live constantly in the vision of the good; and let us descend, in action, into the world of fact, with that vision always before us.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 43.    

            A life lived in this spirit—the spirit that aims at creating rather than possessing—has a certain fundamental happiness, of which it cannot be wholly robbed by adverse circumstances. This is the way of life recommended in the Gospels, and by all the great teachers of the world. Those who have found it are freed from the tyranny of fear, since what they value most in their lives is not at the mercy of outside power.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 45.

            Of all the characteristics of ordinary human nature envy is the most unfortunate; not only does the envious person wish to inflict misfortune and do so whenever he can with impunity, but he is also himself rendered unhappy by envy. Instead of deriving pleasure from what he has, he derives pain from what others have.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 47.

            If, on the other hand, you have as part of the habitual furniture of your mind the past ages of man, his slow and partial emergence out of barbarism, and the brevity of his total existence in comparison with astronomical epochs—if, I say, such thoughts have molded your habitual feelings, you will realize that the momentary battle upon which you are engaged cannot be of such importance as to risk a backward step towards the darkness out of which we have been slowly emerging. . . . If you have attained to this outlook, a certain deep happiness will never leave you, whatever your personal fate may be. Life will become a communion with the great of all ages, and personal death no more than a negligible incident.

— Bertrand Russell, in The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell, Lester E. Denonn (selected & edited), p. 48.