Bertrand Russell on the Salve for Our Modern Helplessness and Overwhelm

Bertrand Russell on the Salve for Our Modern Helplessness and Overwhelm

Maria Popova October 19, 2023 “To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control,” philosopher Martha Nussbaum concluded in considering how to live with our human fragility. And yet in the face of overwhelming uncertainty, when the world seems […]

The Four Desires Driving All Human Behavior: Bertrand Russell’s Magnificent Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

The Four Desires Driving All Human Behavior: Bertrand Russell’s Magnificent Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

Maria Popova November 28, 2022 “Nothing in the world is more exciting than a moment of sudden discovery or invention, and many more people are capable of experiencing such moments than is sometimes thought.” Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872–February 2, 1970) endures as one of humanity’s most lucid and luminous minds — an oracle of timeless […]

“I went to teach but instead had to learn” – Bertrand Russell in Beijing 1920

“I went to teach but instead had to learn” – Bertrand Russell in Beijing 1920

Gordon DumoulinTFF Associate June 1, 2022 “When I went to China, I went to teach; but every day that I stayed I thought less of what I had to teach them and more of what I had to learn from them,” Bertrand Russell’s notes in 1920 (British Philosopher 1872-1970) In 1922, Bertrand Russell published a […]

The love of truth and the truth of love: Bertrand Russell on the two pillars of human flourishing

The love of truth and the truth of love: Bertrand Russell on the two pillars of human flourishing

By Maria Popova October 8, 2020 In the mid-1950s, as the icy terror of the Cold War was cloaking the embering rubble of two World Wars, the BBC producer and cartoonist Hugh Burnett envisioned an unexampled program to serve both as a cross-cultural bridge and a mirror beaming back to a dimmed and discomposed humanity […]

Aage Bertelsen (1901 – 1980) – Danish educator for peace

Aage Bertelsen (1901 – 1980) – Danish educator for peace

  By Jan Oberg and Johan Galtung He was a tall man and a great man, a visionary, pacifist, civil resister, educator and philosopher. He took life more seriously than most and he could be playful and fun like a child. His life’s guiding principle was ”Engage in your time!” and while he wrote and […]