One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny. – Bertrand Russell
What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer. – Bertrand Russell
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. – Bertrand Russell
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change. – Bertrand Russell
Man desired concord; but nature knows better what is good for his species; she desires discord. Man wants to live easy and content; but nature compels him to leave ease… and throw himself into roils and labors. – Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose, 1787