Bertrand Russell Oral Quotations

Science, by itself cannot, supply us with an ethic.

Moral indignation is one of the most harmful forces in the modern world, the more so as it can always be diverted to sinister uses by those who control propaganda.

Official morality has always been oppressive and negative: it has said "thou shalt not," and has not troubled to investigate the effect of activities not forbidden by the code.

I never held Negroes to be inherently inferior. The statement in Marriage and Morals refers to environmental conditioning. I have had it withdrawn from subsequent editions because it is clearly ambiguous.

The psychology of adultery has been falsified by conventional morals, which assume, in monogamous countries, that attraction to one person cannot coexist with affection for another. Everybody knows that this is untrue.

Moral progress has consisted in the main of protest against cruel customs, and of attempts to enlarge human sympathy.

For over two thousand years it has been the custom among earnest moralists to decry happiness as something degraded and unworthy

What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy.

We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one that we preach, but do not practice, and another that we practice, but seldom preach.

Without civic morality communities perish; without personal morality their survival has no value.

We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach.