With the introduction of agriculture mankind entered upon a long period of meanness, misery, and madness, from which they are only now being freed by the beneficent operation of the machine. – Bertrand Russell
I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. – Bertrand Russell
In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards. – Bertrand Russell
Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic. – Bertrand Russell
Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. The small landowners are the most precious part of a state. – Thomas Jefferson
For us political activists and candidates, the morning after any election is a mix of emotions – the personal and the immediate, the culmination of your own recent campaigning efforts and the fortunes of your party and the success or otherwise of what you stand for and believe in. – Lucy Powell