"The testimony of Dostoevski is relevant to this problem — Dostoevski, the only psychologist, incidentally, from whom I had something to learn; he ranks among the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life... This profound human being, who was ten times right in his low estimate of the superficial Germans, lived for a long time among the convicts in Siberia — hardened criminals for whom there was no way back to society — and found them very different from what he himself had expected: they were carved out of just about the best, hardest, and most valuable wood that grows anywhere on Russian soil."
– Friedrich Nietzsche: Twilight of the Idols, 1889
– Friedrich Nietzsche: Twilight of the Idols, 1889
❤3👍1
"... Most people learn nothing from experience, except confirmation of their prejudices."
Bertrand Russell
[ FULL CITATION ]
"The government of the world, moral as well as political, is almost wholly in the hands of the old, who have known the world, not merely for thirty years, but for fifty, sixty, or seventy. All these men have learnt from experience to believe what they already believed before they had experience, for most people learn nothing from experience, except confirmation of their prejudices."
— Bertrand Russell, Mortals and Others, Bertrand Russell’s American Essays 1931–1935, Vol. I, Essay, VI: The Lessons of Experience, p. 30 (23 September 1931)
In the early 1930s, the New York American and other newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst published a literary page to which a large number of writers and artists contributed. Bertrand Russell was one of the regulars, contributing a total of 156 essays from 22 July 1931 to 2 May 1935. In one year alone (1933), he contributed fifty items, virtually one each week. Intended as they were for a newspaper audience, his essays made frequent reference to the events and problems of the day, the Great Depression, the rise of Nazism and Stalinism, Prohibition, the New Deal and many more.
Bertrand Russell
[ FULL CITATION ]
"The government of the world, moral as well as political, is almost wholly in the hands of the old, who have known the world, not merely for thirty years, but for fifty, sixty, or seventy. All these men have learnt from experience to believe what they already believed before they had experience, for most people learn nothing from experience, except confirmation of their prejudices."
— Bertrand Russell, Mortals and Others, Bertrand Russell’s American Essays 1931–1935, Vol. I, Essay, VI: The Lessons of Experience, p. 30 (23 September 1931)
In the early 1930s, the New York American and other newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst published a literary page to which a large number of writers and artists contributed. Bertrand Russell was one of the regulars, contributing a total of 156 essays from 22 July 1931 to 2 May 1935. In one year alone (1933), he contributed fifty items, virtually one each week. Intended as they were for a newspaper audience, his essays made frequent reference to the events and problems of the day, the Great Depression, the rise of Nazism and Stalinism, Prohibition, the New Deal and many more.
❤1
All that we call evil in a moral sense—violence, slavery, the destruction of one creature by another—is the law of the world and nature, which lives by nothing more than this rule of struggle among creatures and destruction of creatures by one another. "
[Vladimir Sergevich Solovyov : Russian Christian Philosopher ]
[Vladimir Sergevich Solovyov : Russian Christian Philosopher ]
"My life was in front of me, closed, ended, like a sack, and yet, everything in it was unfinished. I tried to judge her for a moment. I would have liked to be able to tell myself: it's a beautiful life. However, it could not be judged, it was only a sketch; I was wasting my time signing policies for eternity, I hadn't understood anything. I didn't regret anything: there were many things I could have regretted [...]; death had robbed them all of their charm."
(Jean-Paul Sartre, The Wall)
(Jean-Paul Sartre, The Wall)
👍1