Quote by Bertrand Russell: 'There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it...'

Bertrand Russell was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. Walk into a crowded coffee shop or scroll through social media, and you will quickly spot a familiar ritual. A heavy paperbound volume of James Joyce’s Ulysses or David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest lies open on a small wooden table. Its owner glances around, sips an espresso, and leaves the spine clearly visible to passersby."There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it," wrote British philosopher Bertrand Russell in his 1930 book The Conquest of Happiness.Russell captured a quiet truth about human behaviour. Reading serves two completely different masters: private satisfaction and public status. While we like to imagine that every turned page stems from pure curiosity, our desire for intellectual prestige often drives us to pick up books we have no real intention of finishing.A philosopher’s critique of modern anxietyRussell wrote The Conquest of Happiness during a period of massive social change in post-World War I Britain. As literacy rates climbed and mass-market publishing expanded acros...