03/01/2026
“The East reveres Buddha, the West reveres Christ. Both taught love as the secret of wisdom. The earthly life of Christ was contemporary with that of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, who spent his life in cruelty and disgusting debauchery and perversion. Tiberius had pomp and power; in his day millions trembled at his nod. But he is forgotten.
Those who live nobly, even if in their day they live obscurely, need not fear that they will have lived in vain. Something radiates from their lives, some light that shows the way to their friends, their neighbours perhaps to long future ages. I find many people nowadays oppressed with a sense of impotence, with the feeling that in the vastness of modern societies there is nothing of importance that the individual can do. This is a mistake.
The individual, if he is filled with love of mankind, with breadth of vision, with courage and with endurance, can do a great deal. Every one of us can enlarge our mind, release our imagination, and spread wide our affection and benevolence. And it is those who do this whom ultimately humankind reveres.”
─ Bertrand Russell, The New York Times (3 September 1950). Image: Bertrand Russell, 1954. National Portrait Gallery.
