Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.”
- Source
- Political Ideals
- Date
- 1917
Meaning of “The best life is the one in which…”
Russell ranks creative activity above possession, presenting a good life as one organized around making, developing and contributing rather than accumulating.
Where does it come from?
Political Ideals, Chapter I, Project Gutenberg #4776. Russell distinguishes possessive impulses from creative or constructive impulses and then says that the best life gives the largest role to the latter. This remains a 1917 political-philosophy ideal about individual life and institutions, not a current empirical measure of wellbeing or creativity.
