Broad on "Zombie Journalism"

From p. 245-246 of Broad, C.D. (1918) “Body and Mind” The Monist 28:2 pp.234-258

“The LNW Railway was ultimately built entirely by the bodily movements of human beings, and the trains run at stated times from the same causes. If these bodily movements were to take place just the same apart from minds we should have to believe that, although there had never been the faintest glimmer of intelligence on the earth, the LNW Railway would still have been built and that trains would still run into and out of Euston driven by mindless engine drivers and containing mindless passengers reading newspapers printed by mindless printers. Now it really seems incredible that all these things should go on as before if there had been no minds; we should surely expect to find an immense and noticeable difference in everything (except possibly the newspapers).”

Broad on Wittgenstein, redux

From p.54 of of "The Local Historical Background of Contemporary Cambridge Philosophy", in C. A. Mace (ed.) (1957) British Philosophy in the Mid-Century (London: G. Allen and Unwin) pp. 13-61. (The editor notes that the lectures that the book collects "included one of the last public utterances of C.D. Broad as the Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy.")

"I shall devote only a few lines to him, because several of my younger colleagues, who will be lecturing in this course, have attended his lectures and discussion-classes and have been profoundly influenced by him, whilst I have neither done the former nor suffered the latter."

Broad on "Practical" Philosophy

From "War thoughts in peace time", a lecture delivered in 1931 and reprinted in Broad's Religion, Philosophy and Psychic Research (Routledge, 1953). Also available here.

"... if there is any practical return which a professional philosopher can make to the community which pays him so handsomely for doing such pleasant work in such agreeable surroundings, it is surely that of clearing up confused ideas and pointing out specious fallacies."

Broad on Ward on Naturalism

From p.37 of "The Local Historical Background of Contemporary Cambridge Philosophy", in C. A. Mace (ed.) (1957) British Philosophy in the Mid-Century (London: G. Allen and Unwin) pp. 13-61, describing James Ward's naturalism:

"Ward takes naturalism to be the attempts at philosophic synthesis made by persons who regard the methods of natural science as the only available ways of getting knowledge about matters of fact, and who treat the concepts used by scientists and the laws discovered by them as exact and literal transcriptions of purely objective facts."

A picture, for a change

Taken at the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge:

You can find more information (especially if your Latin translation skills are rusty) here.

Broad on (his own) sexuality

From p.36 of his  (1959) "Autobiography", in Paul A. Schilpp (ed.) The Philosophy of C. D. Broad, (New York: Tudor Publishing Company) pp. 3-68.

"I am deeply indebted to the undergraduate friend who in my first year at Cambridge lent me Havelock Ellis's Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Young men are apt to think themselves uniquely abnormal, and either to worry or to give themselves airs about this. After reading that admirable work, I realised that, however queer I might be, I was not nearly so queer as a number of persons who had escaped the lunatic asylum and the jail, had lived respected if not wholly respectable lives, and had died in the odor of comparative sanctity. Henceforth I had no trouble in principle with that side of my nature, though, like most of us, I have had plenty of worries and upsets on particular occasions in regard to particular individuals. I suppose that the Kinsey reports have the same salutary effect on contemporary youth as Ellis's book had on me. If so, more power to their elbow. The difference is that Havelock Ellis was very nearly a genius, whilst the compilers of those reports are American sociologists."

Broad on Politics

From p.47 his  (1959) "Autobiography", in Paul A. Schilpp (ed.) The Philosophy of C. D. Broad, (New York: Tudor Publishing Company) pp. 3-68.

"I cannot imagine myself in that collection of bone-heads unequally yoked with egg-heads and decorated with a broad lunatic fringe, which is the British Labour Party. As for the Communist Party, if nonsense imposed by violence attracted me, I would prefer the old vatted nonsense of the Roman Church to the thin pseudo-scientific vinegar provided by the Jesuits-without-Jesus of Moscow ... Naturally one tends to become more conservative as one grows older and has more to lose. Not to be radical when one is young argues hardness of heart; to remain so when one is old suggests softness of head."