Quote #165

Pragmatists explained that Truth is what it pays to believe. Historians of morals reduced the Good to a matter of tribal custom. Beauty was abolished by artists in a revolt against the surgary insipidities of a philistine epoch and in a mood of fury in which satisfaction is to be derived only from what hurts. And so the world was swept clear not only of God as a person but of God's essence as a ideal to which man owed an ideal allegiance.

More from Bertrand Russell

  1. Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.
  2. Man is a rational animal - so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this sta…
  3. In a man whose reasoning powers are good, fallacious arguments are evidence of bias.
  4. As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles.
  5. Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy …
  6. Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
  7. The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they a…
  8. For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favourable and unfavourable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern; all alike,…

All Bertrand Russell quotes