Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
- Topic: Fear, Society
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from Bertrand Russell
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favor of the belief which he finds in himself.
Do not feel certain of anything.
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
The man who pursues happiness wisely will aim at the possession of a number of subsidiary interests in addition to those central ones upon which his life is built.
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Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.
Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.
Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.
Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.
I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.
There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism… The one absolutely certain way of brining this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most impressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be saturated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
I propose to raise a revolution against the lie that the majority has the monopoly of the truth.
We have more machinery of government that is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.
Those who would administer wisely must, indeed, be wise, for one of the serious obstacles in the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity.
God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: "This is my country."
Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.