Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects Quotes

“Sin duda el ideal es una cierta rigidez de acción, más una cierta flexibilidad de pensamiento, pero esto es difícil de lograr en la práctica excepto durante los breves períodos de transición. Y parece probable que, si las viejas ortodoxias decaen, surjan nuevos códigos rígidos según las necesidades del conflicto.”
― Bertrand Russell, Por qué no soy cristiano

“Los capitalistas, militaristas y eclesiásticos cooperan en la educación, porque el poder de todos ellos depende del prevalecimiento del sentimentalismo y de la excepcionalidad del juicio crítico.”
― Bertrand Russell, Por qué no soy cristiano

“If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“La convicción de que es importante creer esto o aquello, incluso aunque un examen objetivo no apoye la creencia, es común a casi todas las religiones e inspira todos los sistemas de educación estatal. La consecuencia es que las mentes de los jóvenes no se desarrollan y se llenan de hostilidad fanática hacia los que detentan otros fanatismos y, aún con más virulencia, hacia los contrarios a todos los fanatismos.”
― Bertrand Russell, Por qué no soy cristiano

“Il mondo non ha bisogno di dogmi, ha bisogno di libera ricerca.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“Una educación destinada a eliminar el miedo no es difícil de crear. Sólo se necesita tratar amablemente al niño, colocarlo en un medio donde la iniciativa sea posible sin resultados desastrosos, y librarlo del contacto con los adultos que tienen miedos irracionales, ya sea de la oscuridad, de los ratones o de la revolución social. Tampoco se debe castigar excesivamente a un niño, mimarlo mucho o hacerle reproches exagerados. El librar del odio a unos niños es un asunto más complicado. Las situaciones que despiertan envidia tienen que ser cuidadosamente evitadas mediante una justicia escrupulosa y exacta, como entre distintos niños. Un niño tiene que sentirse objeto del cariño de al menos parte de los adultos con quienes trata, y no debe ser frustrado en sus actividades y curiosidades naturales, excepto cuando su vida o su salud corran peligro.”
― Bertrand Russell, Por qué no soy cristiano

“Consideremos la larga historia de las actividades inspiradas por el fervor moral: los sacrificios humanos, las persecuciones de herejes, las cazas de brujas, los pogroms, hasta que se llega al exterminio en gran escala por medio de gases venenosos, que al menos uno de los colegas episcopales del doctor Barnes parece patrocinar, ya que sostiene que el pacifismo es anticristiano. ¿Son estas abominaciones, y las doctrinas éticas que las inspiran, realmente prueba de un Creador inteligente? ¿Y podemos realmente desear que los hombres que las practicaron vivan eternamente? El mundo en que vivimos puede ser entendido como resultado de la confusión y el accidente; pero, si es el resultado de un propósito deliberado, el propósito tiene que haber sido el de un demonio. Por mi parte, encuentro el accidente una hipótesis menos penosa y más verosímil.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“El obispo pasa a argüir que 'el universo ha sido hecho y está gobernado por un propósito inteligente' y que sería una falta de inteligencia el haber hecho al hombre para que pereciera.

Hay muchas respuestas a este argumento. En primer lugar, se ha hallado, en la investigación científica de la Naturaleza, que la intrusión de valores estéticos o morales, ha sido siempre un obstáculo para el descubrimiento. Solía pensarse que los cuerpos celestes tenían que moverse en círculos, porque el círculo es la curva más perfecta; que las especies tenían que ser inmutables, porque Dios sólo creaba lo perfecto y, por lo tanto, no había necesidad de mejora; que no debían combatirse las epidemias como no fuera mediante el arrepentimiento, porque eran un castigo del pecado, etc. La naturaleza es indiferente a nuestros valores, y sólo puede ser entendida ignorando nuestros conceptos del bien y del mal. El universo puede tener un fin, pero nada de lo que nosotros sabemos sugiere que, de ser así, ese propósito tiene alguna semejanza con los nuestros.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“Intelligence, it might be said, has caused our troubles; but it is not unintelligence that will cure them. Only more and wiser intelligence can make a happier world.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“Sooner or later unorthodoxy will come to be considered a crime to be dealt with by the stake, the purge, or the concentration camp. I can respect the men who argue that religion is true and therefore ought to be believed, but I can only feel profound moral reprobation for those who say that religion ought to be believed because it is useful, and that to ask whether it is true is a waste of time.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“For it is to the irrational passions of the mass that these men owe their power, and they know that they would fall if the power of rational thinking became common. Thus the interlocking power of stupidity, below and love of power above paralyzes the efforts of rational men.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“The man who has the art of arousing the witch-hunting instincts of the mob has a quite peculiar power for evil in a democracy where the habit of the exercise of power by the majority has produced that intoxication and impulse to tyranny which the exercise of authority almost invariably produces sooner or later. Against this danger the chief protection is a sound education designed to combat the tendency to irrational eruptions of collective hate.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“A democracy in which the majority exercises its powers without restraint may be almost as tyrannical as a dictatorship. Toleration of minorities is an essential part of wise democracy, but a part which is not always sufficiently remembered.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“In almost every human society, pornography and exhibitionism are reckoned as offenses, except when, as not infrequently occurs, they form part of religious ceremonies.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“If women are to have sexual freedom, fathers must fade out, and wives must no longer expect to be supported by their husbands. This may come about in time, but it will be a profound social change, and its effects, for good or ill, are incalculable.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“Sin is what is disliked by those who control education.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“It is no longer Satan who makes sin but bad glands and unwise conditioning.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“Whoever invented the phrase "the naked truth" had perceived an important connection. Nakedness is shocking to all right-minded people, and so is truth.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“In a homogeneous country population, such as that of the English shire, people are condemned to hunt foxes; this is expensive and sometimes even dangerous.
Moreover, the fox cannot explain very clearly how much he dislikes being hunted. In all these respects the hunting of human beings is better sport, but if it were not for the nice people, it would be difficult to hunt human beings with a good conscience.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“Courage must be democratized before it can make men humane.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

“Nobody really worries much about what is going to happen millions of years hence. Even if they think they are worrying about that, they are really deceiving themselves. They are worried about something much more mundane, or it may merely be a bad digestion; but nobody is really seriously rendered unhappy by the thought of something that is going to happen to this world millions and millions of years hence. Therefore, although it is of course a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out -- at least I suppose we may say so, although sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation -- it is not such as to render life miserable. It merely makes you turn your attention to other things.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects