Bertrand Russell Quotes

I could never have been a pacifist. To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasurable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity.

People seldom tell the truths that are worth telling. We ought to choose our truths as carefully as we choose our lies and to select our virtues with as much thought as we bestow upon the selection of our enemies.

The justifications of men who kill should always be heard with skepticism, said the monster.

If you disapprove of violence, then you can't think there is any age when violence is appropriate.

In the area of social righteousness we cannot be right on the inside and not do it. We cannot! Of course we have people who pretend that they can, but it simply isn't true.

I've always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel.

I know people. Most have no earthly notion of the price of a snow-white conscience.

It is impossible for human beings, constituted as they are, both to fight and to have ideals.

So?" Bob said. "Hat up, go kill her. Problem solved." "Bob," I said. "You can't just go around killing people." "I know. That's why you should do it." "No, no. I can't go around killing people, either.

Still, it doesn't do to murder people, no matter how offensive they may be.

The moral person contemplates evil, the evil person commits it. And a person without a sense of humor can't distinguish between the two.... I know a lot of people who live in Marin County and contemplate spirituality and never get out of the hot tub.

There are two kinds of people in this world, son. Those who save lives, and those who take lives." "And what of those who protect and defend? Those who save lives by taking lives?" "That's like trying to stop a storm by blowing harder. Ridiculous. You can't protect by killing.

Moralizing and morals are two entirely different things and are always found in entirely different people

People are able to justify immense cruelty and say that it is something that is sanctioned by their faith.

Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love but to use violence to get what they want.

Since barbarism has its pleasures it naturally has its apologists.

Who's the best person you know. Of all the people you know personally, is there anyone who has a sense of right and wrong and lives by it? This was a sticky question because it would have to be Ranger ...but I suspected he occasionally killed people. Only bad people, of course, but still...

Murder is only killing in the wrong place.

It might or might not be right to kill, but sometimes it is necessary.

Had courage, wisdom, and reason always prevailed in people, there would not have been oppressions and oppressors.

In my religion I really cannot think of cases where violence is justified.

And just so you know, the invaders are always the bad guys. Always.

Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work, wheareas economics represents how it actually does work.

Killing makes me feel good.

I got out of the elevator and confronted Mr. Wexler. “Killing is wrong.” “We kill chickens,” Mr. Wexler said. “We kill cows. We kill trees. So big deal, we kill some drug dealers.” It was hard to argue with that kind of logic because I like cows and chickens and trees much better than drug dealers.