Bolshevism is to be reckoned with Mohammedanism rather than with Christianity and Buddhism. Christianity and Buddhism are primarily personal religions, with mystical doctrines and a love of contemplation. Mohammedanism and Bolshevism are practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of the world.
Interpretation
Russell distinguishes between religions that focus on personal, mystical experiences and those that seek to exert societal influence.
In this quote, Bertrand Russell discusses the nature of different belief systems, asserting that while Christianity and Buddhism primarily focus on personal spirituality and individual contemplation, Mohammedanism (Islam) and Bolshevism (communism) are more socially and politically oriented. This highlights a contrast in how these ideologies engage with the world—emphasizing action and governance over individual mystical pursuits.
In practice
In a debate about the impact of ideologies, one could use this quote to illustrate the differences in how various systems prioritize personal versus societal objectives.
St. Paul introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed primarily to prevent the sin of fornication. It is just as if one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent people from stealing cake.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.
At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.
Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, is an attitude which produces hostility to evidence and causes us to close our minds to every fact that does not suit our prejudices.
Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.
The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a patter of systems.
I have no desire to crow over anybody or to see anybody eating crow, figuratively or otherwise. We should all get together and make a country in which everybody can eat turkey whenever he pleases.
This is the first time in my 32 years in public broadcasting that PBS has ordered up programs for ideological instead of journalistic reasons.
Drink! for you know not when you came, nor why; Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.
Salvation cannot be bought with the currency of obedience; it is purchased by the blood of the Son of God. Thinking that we can trade our good works for salvation is like buying a plane ticket and then supposing we own the airline. Or thinking that after paying rent for our home, we now hold title to the entire planet earth.
I don't understand why I'm not dead. When your heart breaks, you should die
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