Bertrand Russell Quotes on Freedom
Bertrand Russell prized freedom, and above all freedom of thought, as a precondition of human progress, and the quotes gathered here express that commitment. Russell held that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, and on those grounds opposed every system, religious or political, that fettered it. He insisted that freedom of thought is not secured by law alone: thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living, and he warned that education and official propaganda can themselves become obstacles to freedom of thought. In his early essay A Free Man's Worship he gave the idea a more austere turn, locating freedom in release from anxious craving for the goods that time and fate destroy. Drawn from his essays and letters, these passages treat the free mind as the basis of everything.
Quotes
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“Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.”
1900s | Letter to Lucy Donnely, November 25, 1902 -
“It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.”
Sceptical Essays(1928) | Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda -
“I don't like the spirit of socialism – I think freedom is the basis of everything.”
1910s | Letter to Constance Malleson (Colette), September 29, 1916 -
“One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.”
The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism(1920) | Part I, Ch. 9: International Policy -
“We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.”
Sceptical Essays(1928) | Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda -
“Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.”
A Free Man's Worship(1903) -
“The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.”
A Free Man's Worship(1903)