“All human activity is prompted by desire. There is a wholly fallacious theory advanced by some earnest moralists to the effect that it is possible to resist desire in the interests of duty and moral principle. I say this is fallacious, not because no man ever acts from a sense of duty, but because duty has no hold on him unless he desires to be dutiful. If you wish to know what men will do, you must know not only, or principally, their material circumstances, but rather the whole system of their desires with their relative strengths.”
More from Bertrand Russell
“We know too much, and feel too little.”
“Love is wise – Hatred is foolish.”
“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”
“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”