February 01, 2005
Bertrand Russell
"The world is in the condition of a drunkard anxious to reform, but surrounded by kind friends offering him drinks, and therefore perpetually relapsing."
"The problem of finding a collection of 'wise' men and leaving the government to them is an insoluble one. That is the ultimate reason for democracy."
"Political opinions are not based upon reason."
"All history shows that government is always conducted in the interests of the governing class, except in so far as it is influenced by fear of losing its power."
"Life should not be too closely regulated or too methodical; our impulses, when not positively destructive or injurious to others, ought if possible to have free play; there should be room for adventure."
"Politicians do not find any attractions in a view which does not lend itself to party declamation, and ordinary mortals prefer views which attribute misfortune to the machinations of their enemies. Consequently people fight for and against quite irrelevant measures, while the few who have a rational opinion are not listened to because they do not minister to any one's passions."
"…love of power, vanity and rivalry. These obviously play a very great part in politics. If politics is ever to allow of a tolerable life, these glory-impulses must be tamed and taught to take no more than their proper place."
"The instinctive appeal of every successful political movement is to envy, rivalry or hate, never to the need for co-operation."
"We do not want to be robbed of an enemy; we want someone to have when we suffer. It is so depressing to think that we suffer because we are fools; yet, taking mankind in the mass, that is the truth. For this reason, no political party can acquire any driving force except through hatred; it must hold up someone to obloquy. If so-and-so's wickedness is the sole cause of our misery, let us punish so-and-so and we shall be happy."
"A well-intentioned person who believes in any strong political movement is merely helping to prolong that organised strife which is destroying our civilisation."
"An honest politician will not be tolerated by a democracy unless he is very stupid… because only a very stupid man can honestly share the prejudices of more than half the nation."
"Knowledge exists, and good will exists; but both remain impotent until they possess the proper organs for making themselves heard."
"In Western Europe the Renaissance produced a brief period of intellectual and artistic splendour, leading to political chaos and the determination of plain men to have done with this fooling and revert to the serious business of killing each other."
"Perhaps in time men may come to feel that intelligence is an asset in a community, but I cannot say that I see much sign of any movement in this direction."
"Most men think that in framing their political opinions they are actuated by desire for the public good; but nine times out of ten a man's politics can be predicted from the way in which he makes a living."
"The liberty of the individual should be respected where his actions do not directly, obviously and indubitably do harm to other people. Otherwise our persecuting instincts will produce a stereotyped society, as in sixteenth-century Spain."
"So long as men continue to have the present fanatical belief in the importance of politics, free thought on political matters will be impossible."
"One of the peculiarities of the English-speaking world is its immense interest and belief in political parties. A very large percentage of English-speaking people really believe that the ills from which they suffer would be cured if a certain political party were in power. That is a reason for the swing of the pendulum. A man votes for one party and remains miserable; he concludes that it was the other party that was to bring the millennium. By the time he is disenchanted with all parties, he is an old man on the verge of death; his sons retain the belief of his youth, and the see-saw goes on.
I want to suggest that, if we are to do any good in politics, we must view political parties in quite a different way. A party which is to obtain power must, in a democracy, make an appeal to which the majority of the nation responds. For reasons which will appear in the course of the argument, an appeal which is widely successful, with the existing democracy, can hardly fail to be harmful. Therefore no important political party is likely to have a useful programme, and if useful measures are to be passed, it must be by means of some other machinery than party government. How to combine any such machinery with democracy is one of the most urgent problems of our time."
"The skill of the politician consists in guessing what people can be brought to think advantageous to themselves; the skill of the expert consists in calculating what really is advantageous."
"The power of the politician, in a democracy, depends upon his adopting the opinions which seem right to the average man. It is useless to urge that politicians ought to be high-minded enough to advocate what enlightened opinion considers good, because if they do they are swept aside for others."
"Since politicians are divided into rival groups, they aim at similarly dividing the nation, unless they have the good fortune to unite it in war against some other nation. They live by 'sound and fury, signifying nothing'. They cannot pay attention to anything difficult to explain, or to anything not involving division (either between nations or within the nation), or to anything that would diminish the power of politicians as a class."
"A fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic institutions impossible."
"Democracy is successful in so far that the government is obliged to respect public opinion."
"[I]n fact almost any opinion worth either advocating or combating is sure to affect someone adversely."
"Our beliefs result from the combination, in varying degrees, of desire with observation. In some, the part of the one factor is very slight; in others, that of the other. What can be strictly established by empirical evidence is very little, and when our beliefs go beyond this, desire plays a part in their genesis. On the other hand, few beliefs long survive definitive conclusive evidence of their falsity, though they may survive for many ages when there is no evidence either for or against them."
"The success of insanity, in literature, in philosophy, and in politics, is one of the peculiarities of our age, and the successful form of insanity proceeds almost entirely from impulses towards power."
"The problem of the taming of power is a very ancient one. The Taoists thought it insoluble, and advocated anarchism; the Confucians trusted to a certain ethical and governmental training which should turn the holders of power into sages endowed with moderation and benevolence. At the same period, in Greece, democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny were contending for mastery; democracy was intended to check abuses of power, but was perpetually defeating itself by falling a victim to the temporary popularity of some demagogue. Plato, like Confucius, sought the solution in a government of men trained to wisdom. This view has been revived by Mr and Mrs Sidney Webb, who admire an oligarchy in which power is confined to those who have the 'vocation of leadership'. In the interval between Plato and the Webbs, the world has tried military autocracy, theocracy, hereditary monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, and the Rule of the Saints—the last of these, after the failure of Cromwell's experiment, having been revived in our day by Lenin and Hitler. All this suggests that our problem has not yet been solved."
Posted by pauldavies on February 01, 2005
