Power.

"If the State does not acquire supremacy over such [vast private] enterprises, it becomes their puppet, and they become the real State."¹ DRUCKER

"I think all the great religions of the world . . . both untrue and harmful."^2a GNOSTICS CRICK TIPLER

"There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that he believed in hell."^2b

Bertrand Russell on God and Religion. 

"How are we to know what really is God's will? If the forces of evil have a certain share of power, they may deceive us into accepting as Scripture what is really their work. This was the view of the Gnostics, who thought that the Old Testament was the work of an evil spirit."^3a PLATO GNOSTICS DESCARTES LOCKE CASSIRER BUBER

"I am persuaded that there is absolutely no limit to the absurdities that can, by government action, come to be generally believed. Give me an adequate army . . .  and I will undertake . . . to make the majority of the population believe that two and two are three . . . "^3b ARISTOTLE DESCARTES PASCAL BERKELEY VOLTAIRE JAMES SANTAYANA POPPER ORWELL DRUCKER PENROSE

" . . . It became obvious that I had lived in a fool's paradise. Human nature, even among those who had thought themselves civilized, had dark depths that I had not suspected."⁴
   

¹ Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). Power: A New Social Analysis (1938). Introduction by Kirk Willis, 1995. London, England: Routledge, at 194. (First published by George Allen & Unwin 1938.)

² Bertrand Russell. Why I Am Not a Christian, and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. Edited by Paul Edwards. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1957.

³ Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell on God and Religion. Edited by Al Sekel.
^a An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish, at 215.
^b Ibid., at 225.

⁴ Bertrand Russell. Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell. New York, NY: The Modern Library, 1927, 1955, at xi.

MK-BOOKS-RUSSELL-1998/20040827