对爱情的渴望，对知识的追求，对人类苦难不可遏制的同情，是支配我一生的单纯而强烈的三种感情。这些感情如阵阵巨风，吹拂在我动荡不定的生涯中，有时甚至吹过深沉痛苦的海洋，直抵绝望的边缘。
我所以追求爱情，有三方面的原因。首先，爱情有时给我带来狂喜，这种狂喜竟如此有力，以致使我常常会为了体验几小时爱的喜悦，而宁愿牺牲生命中其他一切。其次，爱情可以摆脱孤寂——身历那种可怕孤寂的人的战栗意识，有时会由世界的边缘，观察到冷酷无生命的无底深渊。最后，在爱的结合中，我看到了古今圣贤以及诗人们所梦想的天堂的缩影，这正是我所追寻的人生境界。虽然它对一般的人类生活也许太美好了，但这正是我透过爱情所得到场最终发现。
我曾以同样的感情追求知识，我渴望去了解人类的。也渴望知道星星为什么会发光，同时我还想理解毕达哥拉斯的力量。
爱情与知识的可能领域，总是引领我到天堂的境界，可对人类苦难的同情经常把我带回现实世界。那些痛苦的呼唤经常在我内心深处引起回响。饥饿中的孩子，被压迫被折磨者，给子女造成重担的孤苦无依的老人，以及全球性的孤独、贫穷和痛苦的存在，是对人类生活理想的无视和讽刺。我常常希望能尽自己的微薄之力去减轻这不必要的痛苦，但我发现我完全失败了，因此我自己也感到很痛苦。
这就是我的一生，我发现人是值得活的。如果有谁再给我一次生活的机会，我将欣然接受这难得的赐予。
本文为伯兰特·罗素自传前言。
英文版：What I Have Lived For
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.
[罗素语录]
1. To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
须知参差多态乃是幸福之本源。
2. Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. 恐惧是迷信的主要温床，也是残忍的主要温床。 征服恐惧是智慧的开端。
3. War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
战争不决定谁对了，只决定谁留下了。
4．We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
我们正面临一个非常矛盾的事实，即教育已经成为一个主要的智力和自由思想的障碍。
5．Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
生活只不过是一场成为罪犯而不是受害者的竞争。
6. I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
我绝不会为我的信仰而献身，因为我可能是错的。
7. Desires keep man restless even in Paradise.
欲望使人即使到了天堂也会坐立不安
8. To realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.
意识到时间并不重要乃是智慧之门。
9. Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.
言论自由只有在政府认为它自身安全的时候才存在。
10. It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
使我们无法自由和高尚地活着的最主要原因是对财富的迷恋。
11. The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
世界充满了神奇的东西，它们在耐心地等待我们变得更有智慧。
12 The secret to happiness is this: Let your interest be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.
幸福的秘诀是：让你的兴趣尽量的扩大，让你对人对物的反应，尽量的倾于友善。
13 It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
据说人是一种理性动物。穷我自己一生，我都在寻找这观点的证据。
14 Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
人是轻信的动物，必须得相信点什么。如果这种信仰没有什么好的依据，糟糕的依据也能对付。
15 In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors.
在美国，所有人都认为没有什么人比他的社会地位高，因为人人生而平等。但是，他可不承认没有人比他社会地位低。
