A Message to the Future — Intelligence, Patience, and Eloquence
“Neither misery nor folly seems to me any part of the inevitable lot of man. And I am convinced that intelligence, patience, and eloquence can, sooner or later, lead the human race out of its self-imposed tortures provided it does not exterminate itself meanwhile. I may have thought the road to a world of free and happy human beings shorter than it is proving to be, but I was not wrong in thinking that such a world is possible, and that it is worth while to live with a view to bringing it nearer.“
— Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1967–1969), Volume III: Postscript, p. 890
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Image: Bertrand Russell on the grounds of his home in Penrhyndeudreath, Gwynedd, United Kingdom, 3 March 1965.
Bertrand Russell was a philosopher, mathematician, educational and sexual reformer, pacifist, prolific letter writer, author and columnist. 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."
Russell died from influenza on the night of 2 February 1970 just after 8 pm at 97 years old with his wife by his side (Edith Finch Russell 5 November 1900 – 1 January 1978 an American writer and biographer). Russell had a fondness for Wales and would live there for most of his later years, from 1955 until 1970. Plas Penrhyn was near Portmeirion Village & Castell Deudraeth where Russell had stayed many times as a boy and was near the sea (Penrhyndeudraeth means peninsula with two beaches in Welsh). His ashes were scattered over the Welsh hills in unknown locations. In accordance with his will, there was no religious ceremony but one minute's silence, with only five people present (the number five being Russell's favorite number).
“The fact is you cannot be intelligent merely by choosing your opinions. The intelligent man is not the man who holds such-and-such views but the man who has sound reasons for what he believes and yet does not believe it dogmatically. And opinions held for sound reasons have less emotional unity than the opinions of dogmatists because reason is non-party, favouring now one side and now another. That is what people find so unpleasant about it.”
— Bertrand Russell, Mortals and Others, Volume II: American Essays 1931-1935, On Orthodoxies (23 August 1933), p. 58
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Mortal and Others (1975) shows the serious and non-serious side of Russell's personality and works. 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 contribute. 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.
Image: Bertrand Russell (1935).
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