羅素在1950年得到諾貝爾奬，他的得奬演說很長、也很特別。本篇是1954/12/12發表的演講。他是懷疑主義的先知人物，所立場經反反覆覆，而且極具爭議性。二戰開打前曾經支持綏靖政策，但後來卻轉而支持與納粹德國作戰到底。
Shall We choose Death ？Dc. 12, 1954
Bertrand Russell
Here, then, is the problem which I present to you. Stark and dread and inescapable：Shall we put and end to he human race or shall mankind renounce war？People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war. The abolition of war will demand distasteful limitations of national sovereignty. But what perhaps impedes understanding of the situation more than anything else us that the tern “mankind” feels vague and abstract.
People scarcely realize in imagination that the danger is to themselves and their children and their grandchildren, and not only to a dimly apprehended humanity. And so they hope that preps war may be allowed o continue provided modern weapons are prohibited. I am afraid this hope is illusory. Whatever agreements not to use hydrogen bombs had been reached intimate of peace, they would no longer be considered binding in time of war, and both sides would set to work to manufacture hydrogen bombs as soon as war broke out, for if one side manufactured them would be victorious.
In the great would of astronomy and in the little would of the atom, Man has unveiled secrets which might have been thought undiscoverable. In ar and literature and religion, some men have shown a sublimity of feeling which makes the species worth preserving. Is all this to end in trivial horror because two few are able to think of Man rather than of this or hat group often? Is our race to the simplest dictates of self-preservation, that the last proof of its silly cleverness is to be the extermination of all life on our planet? —-for it will be not only men who will perish, but also the animals, whom no one can accuse of Communism or anticommunist.
I cannot believe that this is to be the end. I would have men forget their quarrels for n moment and reflect that, if they all allow themselves to survive there is every reason to expect the triumphs of the future to exceed immeasurable the triumphs of the past.
There lies before us, if we choose, continual process inf happiness, knowledge, and wisdom, shall we, instead, choose death, because we anent forget our quarrels?
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