Fascinationalism

Not Rocket Science

One of the great attractions of patriotism – it fulfils our worst wishes. 

In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. 

Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous. 

— Aldous Huxley

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it. 

— George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons. 

— Bertrand Russell

Heroism on command, 

senseless violence, 

and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism

 – how passionately I hate them! 

— Albert Einstein

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. 

— Oscar Wilde

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. 

— Samuel Johnson

Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on his own dunghill. 

— Richard Aldington

First World Problem

To frame a philosophy capable of coping 

with men intoxicated with the prospect of almost unlimited power 

and also with the apathy of the powerless

is the most pressing task of our time.

 — Bertrand Russell The History Of Western Philosophy (p700)

Homogenising The Hive

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. 

They are made stupid by education.

 — Bertrand Russell

Liberal Helping

Hegel's Philosophy Of The State

Such is Hegel's doctrine of the State — a doctrine, which, if accepted, justifies every internal tyranny and every external aggression that can possibly be imagined.  The strength of his bias appears in the fact that his theory is largely inconsistent with his own metaphysic, and that the inconsistencies are such as tend to the justification of cruelty and international brigandage.  A man may be pardoned if logic compels him regretfully to reach conclusions he deplores, but not for departing from logic in order to be free to advocate crimes.

 — Bertrand Russell History Of Western Philosophy (p711)

Hegel's Philosophy Of History

Like other historical theories, it required, if it was to be made plausible, some distortion of the facts and considerable ignorance.  Hegel, like Marx and Spengler after him, possessed both these qualifications.

 — Bertrand Russell History Of Western Philosophy (p705)

Consensus

The fact that an opinion has been widely held 

is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; 

indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, 

a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

 — Bertrand Russell

Non Cogito Non Sum

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

 — Bertrand Russell

Free Market

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, 

which are embodied in one maxim: 

The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

 — Bertrand Russell

Killing For Their Country

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
 — Bertrand Russell

No Doubt

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt.

 — Bertrand Russell

Dumbing Down

A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, 

because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
 — Bertrand Russell

Machiavellian

[Machiavelli] holds that religion should have a prominent place in the State, not on the ground of its truth, but as a social cement.

 — Bertrand Russell 'The History Of Western Philosophy' (p493)

The Alignment Of Conservative Ideology & Hostility To Science

Throughout this long deveopment, from 600 BC to the present day, philosophers have been divided into those who wished to tighten social bonds and those who wished to relax them. With this difference, others have been associated. The disciplinarians have advocated some system of dogma, either old or new, and have therefore been compelled to be, in greater or lesser degree, hostile to science, since their dogmas could not be proved empirically. They have almost invariably taught that happiness is not the good, but that ‘nobility’ or ‘heroism’ is to be preferred. They have had a sympathy with irrational parts of human nature, since they have felt reason to be inimical to social cohesion.

 — Bertrand Russell

Proving Chomsky Right

The finding of arguments
for a conclusion given in advance
is not philosophy,
but special pleading.

 — Bertrand Russell 'The History Of Western Philosophy' (pp 453-4)

Intuition And Science

It is not what the man [sic] of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.

 — Bertrand Russell 'The History Of Western Philosophy' (p514)

A Matter Of Perception

George Berkeley is important in philosophy through his denial of the existence of matter…He maintained that material objects only exist through being perceived.

 — Bertrand Russell 'The History Of Western Philosophy'

Putting The Negation In Negotiation

[For Spinoza] finite things are defined by their boundaries, physical or logical, that is to say, by what they are not: ‘all determination is negation’.

 — Bertrand Russell 'The History Of Western Philosophy'

Know Your Own Mind

There is thus, in all philosophy derived from Descartes, a tendency to subjectivism, and to regarding matter as something only knowable, if at all, by inference from what is known of mind.
 — Bertrand Russell 'The History Of Western Philosophy'