Bertrand Russell Quotes
I cannot favour laws such as that of Idaho, which allows sterilization of 'mental defectives, epileptics, habitual criminals, moral degenerates, and sex perverts.' The last two categories here are very vague . . . The law of Idaho would have justified the sterilization of Socrates, Plato, Julius Caesar, and St. Paul.
Russell, Bertrand. Marriage and Morals. George Allen & Unwin, 1929, p. 266.
Note that under the rubric of protecting children, this organization was advocating the forced sterilization of people who their primitive and unreliable instruments and biases determined were “feeble minded”. Although many states actually did this for a few decades with the conservative Supreme Court approval at the time, and the gross immorality, the method of forced sterilization is genetically flawed and did not even work to achieve their own objectives. Also not their “image” of the “feeble minded” that appeared on the cover of this report. Virginia did not repeal their law mandating forced sterilization until 1974.
This dramatic quotation essentially argued that human sperm and egg cells were the property of and must be under the control of the society and not the individual. Although this fascist notion never had a majority in America, there were a substantial number of Americans who agreed with this position. This quote is also an excellent example of an ideological organizations adopting the names and rubric of science and trying to sell junk science to the nation,
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell OM FRS was a British polymath, philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate. Bertrand Russell was one of the most influential and widely known intellectual figures of the twentieth century. In 1950 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his extensive contributions to world literature and for his “rationality and humanity, as a fearless champion of free speech and free thought in the West.“
