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A review by petertruog
The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell
3.0
One of the first self-help / 'happiness' books ever written, it was surely groundbreaking for its time, but has since been duplicated by other 'happiness' books out there. Would be an interesting first 'happiness' book to read, but doesn't contain much new vis-a-vis the others I've read. Russell assumes that people need certain basic things for happiness (e.g., food, shelter, health, etc.) just like many other theories that exist today.
One interesting point that Russel does make is the relationship between "effort" and happiness; if you do not strive for certain goals, for example, happiness is harder to obtain. Pretty self-explanatory now that I write it though, I guess. Some of my favorite quotes:
"The typical unhappy man is one who, having been deprived in youth of some normal satisfaction, has come to value this one kind of satisfaction more than any other, and has therefore given to his life a one-sided direction, together with a quite undue emphasis upon the achievement as opposed to the activities connected with it."
"...to be without some of the things you want is an indisputable part of happiness."
"Love is to be valued in the first instance...as in itself a source of delight...In the second place, love is to be valued because it enhances all the best pleasures, such as music, and sunrise in mountains, and the sea under the full moon."
"The treadmill [of crazy life and burdensome professional responsibility] is one upon which they remain merely because they have not noticed that it fails to take them up to a higher level."
"It is amazing how much both happiness and efficiency can be increased by the cultivation of an orderly mind, which thinks about a matter adequately at the right time rather than inadequately at all times."
"Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is as futile."
"The habit of thinking in terms of comparison is a fatal one. When anything pleasant occurs it should be enjoyed to the full, without stopping to think that it is not so pleasant as something else that may possibly be happening to someone else. 'Yes,' says the envious man, 'this is a sunny day and it is springtime and the birds are singing and the flowers are in bloom, but I understand that the springtime in Sicily is a thousand times more beautiful, that the birds sing more exquisitely in the groves of Helicon, and that the rose of Sharon is more lovely than any in my garden.'...the positive sum of pleasures in a modern man's life is undoubtedly greater than was to be found in more primitive communities, but the consciousness of what might be has increased even more."
On travel: "Take again such a matter as travel; some men will travel through many countries, going always to the best hotels, eating exactly the same food as they would eat at home, meeting the same idle rich whom they would meet at home, conversing on the same topics upon which they converse at their own dinner table. When they return, their only feeling is one of relief at having done with the boredom of expensive locomotion. Other men wherever they go see what is characteristic, make the acquaintance of people who typify the locality, observe whatever is of interest, either historically or socially, eat the food of the country, learn its manners and its language, and come home with a new stock of pleasant thoughts for winter evenings."
"In the good life there must be a balance between different activities, and no one of them must be carried so far as to make the others impossible."
"Fear for others is only a shade better than fear for ourselves. Moreover, it is very often a camouflage for possessiveness. It is hoped that by rousing their fears a more complete empire over them can be obtained."
"The man who can forget his work when it is over and not remember it until it begins again the next day is likely to do his work far better than the man who worries about it throughout the intervening hours."
Like Alan Watts: "Undoubtedly, we should desire the happiness of those whom we love, but not as an alternative to our own. In fact the whole antithesis between self and the rest of the world, which is implied in the doctrine of self-denial, disappears as soon as we have any genuine interest in persons or things outside ourselves. Through such interests a man comes to feel himself part of the steam of life, not a hard separate entity like a billiard ball."
One interesting point that Russel does make is the relationship between "effort" and happiness; if you do not strive for certain goals, for example, happiness is harder to obtain. Pretty self-explanatory now that I write it though, I guess. Some of my favorite quotes:
"The typical unhappy man is one who, having been deprived in youth of some normal satisfaction, has come to value this one kind of satisfaction more than any other, and has therefore given to his life a one-sided direction, together with a quite undue emphasis upon the achievement as opposed to the activities connected with it."
"...to be without some of the things you want is an indisputable part of happiness."
"Love is to be valued in the first instance...as in itself a source of delight...In the second place, love is to be valued because it enhances all the best pleasures, such as music, and sunrise in mountains, and the sea under the full moon."
"The treadmill [of crazy life and burdensome professional responsibility] is one upon which they remain merely because they have not noticed that it fails to take them up to a higher level."
"It is amazing how much both happiness and efficiency can be increased by the cultivation of an orderly mind, which thinks about a matter adequately at the right time rather than inadequately at all times."
"Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is as futile."
"The habit of thinking in terms of comparison is a fatal one. When anything pleasant occurs it should be enjoyed to the full, without stopping to think that it is not so pleasant as something else that may possibly be happening to someone else. 'Yes,' says the envious man, 'this is a sunny day and it is springtime and the birds are singing and the flowers are in bloom, but I understand that the springtime in Sicily is a thousand times more beautiful, that the birds sing more exquisitely in the groves of Helicon, and that the rose of Sharon is more lovely than any in my garden.'...the positive sum of pleasures in a modern man's life is undoubtedly greater than was to be found in more primitive communities, but the consciousness of what might be has increased even more."
On travel: "Take again such a matter as travel; some men will travel through many countries, going always to the best hotels, eating exactly the same food as they would eat at home, meeting the same idle rich whom they would meet at home, conversing on the same topics upon which they converse at their own dinner table. When they return, their only feeling is one of relief at having done with the boredom of expensive locomotion. Other men wherever they go see what is characteristic, make the acquaintance of people who typify the locality, observe whatever is of interest, either historically or socially, eat the food of the country, learn its manners and its language, and come home with a new stock of pleasant thoughts for winter evenings."
"In the good life there must be a balance between different activities, and no one of them must be carried so far as to make the others impossible."
"Fear for others is only a shade better than fear for ourselves. Moreover, it is very often a camouflage for possessiveness. It is hoped that by rousing their fears a more complete empire over them can be obtained."
"The man who can forget his work when it is over and not remember it until it begins again the next day is likely to do his work far better than the man who worries about it throughout the intervening hours."
Like Alan Watts: "Undoubtedly, we should desire the happiness of those whom we love, but not as an alternative to our own. In fact the whole antithesis between self and the rest of the world, which is implied in the doctrine of self-denial, disappears as soon as we have any genuine interest in persons or things outside ourselves. Through such interests a man comes to feel himself part of the steam of life, not a hard separate entity like a billiard ball."