If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years. – Bertrand Russell
The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. – Bertrand Russell
Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age. – Bertrand Russell
Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery. – Bertrand Russell
There is a homely directness about these rustic apothegms which makes them far more palatable than the strained and sophisticated epigrams of the characters of Oscar Wilde’s plays, who are ever striving strenuously to dazzle us with verbal pyrotechnics. – Brander Matthews, “American Aphorisms,” Harper’s Magazine, November 1915,