Most political leaders acquire their position by causing large numbers of people to believe that these leaders are actuated by altruistic desires
Interpretation
This quote highlights the idea that many political leaders gain power by convincing people they have selfless motives.
Bertrand Russell reflects on the nature of political leadership, suggesting that many leaders rise to power not solely based on their abilities or policies, but by manipulating public perception. They create an impression of altruism, which allows them to garner support from the masses who believe in their supposed selflessness, even if their true motivations may be more self-serving. This insight invites a critical examination of the relationship between perceptions and reality in politics.
In practice
During a political debate, to illustrate a candidate's misleading rhetoric.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
Only as the written text began to speak would the voices of the forest, and of the river, begin to fade. And only then would language loosen its ancient association with the invisible breath, the spirit sever itself from the wind, the psyche dissociate itself from the environing air.
In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.
I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process.
The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples β that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at.
Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths...and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
Do the gods of different nations talk to each other?...Is there some annual get-together where they compare each other's worshippers? Mine will bow their faces to the floor and trace woodgrain lines for me, says one. Mine will sacrifice animals, says another. Mine will kill anyone who insults me, says a third. Here is the question I think of most often: "Are there any who can honestly boast, My worshippers obey my good laws, and treat each other kindly, and live simple generous lives?
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