Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell was a founder of analytic philosophy and one of the early twentieth century’s most prominent logicians, awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature for writings championing humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought. Alongside the technical work he was a relentless public essayist, and in the early 1930s he wrote a syndicated column for the American press. The 1933 piece that gave rise to this quote was not a detached remark about human psychology — it was written about three months after Hitler took power, and it was about how a civilisation hands itself to its worst elements.