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A Drop Of Water Is Not Immortal; It Can Be Resolved Into Oxygen And Hydrogen. If, Therefore, A Drop Of Water Were To Maintain That It Had A Quality Of Aqueousness Which Would Survive Its Dissolution We Should Be Inclined To Be Skeptical. In Like Manner We Know That The Brain Is Not Immortal.

-Bertrand Russell

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A Drop Of Water

Bertrand Russell

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A Drop Of Water Is Not Immortal; It Can Be Resolved Into Oxygen And Hydrogen. If, Therefore, A Drop Of Water Were To Maintain That It Had A Quality Of Aqueousness Which Would Survive Its Dissolution We Should Be Inclined To Be Skeptical. In Like Manner We Know That The Brain Is Not Immortal.

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The World That We Must Seek Is A World In Which The Creative Spirit Is Alive, In Which Life Is An Adventure Full Of Joy And Hope, Based Rather Upon The Impulse To Construct Than Upon The Desire To Retain What We Possess Or To Seize What Is Possessed By Others.

All Knowledge, We Feel, Must Be Built Up Upon Our Instinctive Beliefs; And If These Are Rejected, Nothing Is Left.

If You Think Your Belief Is Based Upon Reason, You Will Support It By Argument Rather Than By Persecution, And Will Abandon It If The Argument Goes Against You. But If Your Belief Is Based Upon Faith, You Will Realize That Argument Is Useless, And Will Therefore Resort To Force Either In The Form Of Persecution Or By Stunting Or Distorting The Minds Of The Young In What Is Called 'education.'

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.

We May Say, In A Broad Way, That Greek Philosophy Down To Aristotle Expresses The Mentality Appropriate To The City State; That Stoicism Is Appropriate To A Cosmopolitan Despotism; That Stochastic Philosophy Is An Intellectual Expression Of The Church As An Organization; That Philosophy Since Descartes, Or At Any Rate Since Locke, Tends To Embody The Prejudices Of The Commercial Middle Class; And That Marxism And Fascism Are The Philosophies Appropriate To The Modern Industrial State.

Certain Characteristics Of The Subject Are Clear. To Begin With, We Do Not In This Subject Deal With Particular Things Or Particular Properties: We Deal Formally With What Can Be Said About Any Thing Or Any Property. We Are Prepared To Say That One And One Are Two, But Not That Socrates And Plato Are Two.

The Puritanism Of Christianity Has Played Havoc With The Moderation That An Enlightened And Tolerant Critical Spirit Would Have Produced. I've Noticed That In Whatever Country, County, Town, Or Other Region There Is A Regulation Enjoining Temperance, The Population Seems To Be Entirely Composed Of Teetotallers And Drunkards. There's A Bible On That Shelf There. But I Keep It Next To Voltaire - Poison And Antidote.

A Democrat Need Not Believe That The Majority Will Always Reach A Wise Decision. He Should However Believe In The Necessity Of Accepting The Decision Of The Majority, Be It Wise Or Unwise, Until Such A Time That The Majority Reaches Another Decision.

This, However, Is A Passing Nightmare; In Time The Earth Will Become Again Incapable Of Supporting Life, And Peace Will Return.

I Say People Who Feel They Must Have A Faith Or Religion In Order To Face Life Are Showing A Kind Of Cowardice, Which In Any Other Sphere Would Be Considered Contemptible. But When It Is In The Religious Sphere It Is Thought Admirable, And I Cannot Admire Cowardice Whatever Sphere It Is In.

Boys And Girls Should Be Taught Respect For Each Other's Liberty... And That Jealousy And Possessiveness Kill Love.

At First It Seems Obvious, But The More You Think About It The Stranger The Deductions From This Axiom Seem To Become; In The End You Cease To Understand What Is Meant By It.

It Seems To Me A Fundamental Dishonesty, And A Fundamental Treachery To Intellectual Integrity To Hold A Belief Because You Think It's Useful And Not Because You Think It's True.

Among The Tibetans, One Wife Has Many Husbands, Because Men Are Too Poor To Support A Whole Wife.

Ever Since Men Became Capable Of Free Speculation, Their Actions, In Innumerable Important Respects, Have Depended Upon Their Theories As To The World And Human Life, As To What Is Good And What Is Evil. This Is True In The Present Day As At Any Former Time. To Understand An Age Or A Nation, We Must Understand Its Philosophy, And To Understand Its Philosophy We Must Ourselves Be In Some Degree Philosophers. There Is Here A Reciprocal Causation: The Circumstances Of Men S Lives Do Much To Determine Their Philosophy, But, Conversely, Their Philosophy Does Much To Determine Their Circumstances.

Fervent Religious Believers Sacrifice Pleasures Of The Body, But Instead Enjoy Pleasures Of The Mind, Including The Joy Of Knowing That Those Men Who Didn't Follow Their Religion Would Be Tortured For Eternity.

War Can Only Be Abolished By The Establishment Of A World Government.

World Government

Grasshopper Always Wrong In Argument With Chicken.

In Astronomy, The Law Of Gravitation Is Plainly Better Worth Knowing Than The Position Of A Particular Planet On A Particular Night, Or Even On Every Night Throughout A Year. There Are In The Law A Splendour And Simplicity And Sense Of Mastery Which Illuminate A Mass Of Otherwise Uninteresting Details. But In History The Matter Is Far Otherwise. Historical Facts, Many Of Them, Have An Intrinsic Value, A Profound Interest On Their Own Account, Which Makes Them Worthy Of Study, Quite Apart From Any Possibility Of Linking Them Together By Means Of Causal Laws.

It Would Now Be Technically Possible To Unify The World, Abolish War And Poverty Altogether, If Men Desired Their Own Happiness More Than The Misery Of Their Enemies.

If A Philosophy Is To Bring Happiness It Should Be Inspired By Kindly Feelings. Marx Pretended That He Wanted The Happiness Of The Proletariat; What He Really Wanted Was The Unhappiness Of The Bourgeois.

Hatred Of Enemies Is Easier And More Intense Than Love Of Friends. But From Men Who Are More Anxious To Injure Opponents Than To Benefit The World At Large No Great Good Is To Be Expected.

Arithmetic Must Be Discovered In Just The Same Sense In Which Columbus Discovered The West Indies, And We No More Create Numbers Than He Created The Indians.

Punctuality Is A Quality The Need Of Which Is Bound Up With Social Co-operation.

When I Was A Child . . . Only Virtue Was Prized, Virtue At The Expense Of Intellect, Health, Happiness, And Every Mundane Good.

From That Awful Encounter Of The Soul With The Outer World, Enunciation, Wisdom, And Charity Are Born; And With Their Birth A New Life Begins. To Take Into The Inmost Shrine Of The Soul The Irresistible Forces Whose Puppets We Seem To Be - Death And Change, The Irrevocableness Of The Past, And The Powerlessness Of Man Before The Blind Hurry Of The Universe From Vanity To Vanity - To Feel These Things And Know Them Is To Conquer Them.

Why Is Propaganda So Much More Successful When It Stirs Up Hatred Than When It Tries To Stir Up Friendly Feeling?

A Sense Of Duty Is Useful In Work But Offensive In Personal Relations. People Wish To Be Liked, Not To Be Endured With Patient Resignation.

For My Part, The Thing I Would Wish To Obtain From Money Would Be Leisure With Security. But What The Typical Modern Man Desires To Get With It Is More Money, With A View To Ostentation, Splendour, And The Outshining Of Those Who Have Hitherto Been His Equals.

It Was The Duty Of Wives To Submit To Husbands, Not Of Husbands To Submit To Wives. . . Men Have Stronger Muscles Than Women.

We Are Faced With The Paradoxical Fact That Education Has Become One Of The Chief Obstacles To Intelligence And Freedom Of Thought.

The Fundamental Concept In Social Science Is Power, In The Same Sense In Which Energy Is The Fundamental Concept In Physics.

Inferences Of Science And Common Sense Differ From Those Of Deductive Logic And Mathematics In A Very Important Respect, Namely, When The Premises Are True And The Reasoning Correct, The Conclusion Is Only Probable.

No Man Can Be A Good Teacher Unless He Has Feelings Of Warm Affection Toward His Pupils And A Genuine Desire To Impart To Them What He Believes To Be Of Value.

As I Grew Up I Became Increasingly Interested In Philosophy, Or Which [his Family] Profoundly Disapproved. Everytime The Subject Came Up They Repeated With Unfailing Regularity, "what Is Mind? No Matter. What Is Matter? Never Mind." After Some Fifty Or Sixty Repititions, This Remark Ceased To Amuse Me.

To Be Happy In This World, Especially When Youth Is Past, It Is Necessary To Feel Oneself Not Merely An Isolated Individual Whose Day Will Soon Be Over, But Part Of The Stream Of Life Flowing On From The First Germ To The Remote And Unknown Future.

A Man's Acts Are Partly Determined By Spontaneous Impulse, Partly By The Conscious And Unconscious Effects Of The Various Groups To Which He Belongs.

Owing To The Identification Of Religion With Virtue, Together With The Fact That The Most Religious Men Are Not The Most Intelligent, A Religious Education Gives Courage To The Stupid To Resist The Authority Of Educated Men, As Has Happened, For Example, Where The Teaching Of Evolution Has Been Made Illegal. So Far As I Can Remember, There Is Not One Word In The Gospels In Praise Of Intelligence; And In This Respect Ministers Of Religion Follow Gospel Authority More Closely Than In Some Others.

The Human Animal, Like Others, Is Adapted To A Certain Amount Of Struggle For Life [and] The Mere Absence Of Effort From His Life Removes An Essential Ingredient Of Happiness. [. . .] He Forgets That To Be Without Some Of The Things You Want Is An Indispensable Part Of Happiness.

Nothing Is So Exhausting As Indecision, And Nothing Is So Futile.

Procrastination

War Grows Out Of Ordinary Human Nature.

If You Question Any Candid Person Who Is No Longer Young, He Is Very Likely To Tell You That, Having Tasted Life In This World, He Has No Wish To Begin Again As A "new Boy" In Another.

It Will Be Said That The Joy Of Mental Adventure Must Be Rare, That There Are Few Who Can Appreciate It, And That Ordinary Education Can Take No Account Of So Aristocratic A Good. I Do Not Believe This. The Joy Of Mental Adventure Is Far Commoner In The Young Than In Grown Men And Women. ...it Is Rare In Later Life Because Everything Is Done To Kill It During Education.

With Subjectivity In Philosophy, Anarchism In Politics Goes Hand In Hand. Already During Luther's Lifetime, Unwelcome And Unacknowledged Disciples Had Developed The Doctrine Of Anabaptism, Which For A Time Dominated The City Of Munster. The Anabaptists Repudiated All Law Since They Held That Good Men Will Be Guided At Every Moment By The Holy Spirit, Who Can Not Be Bound By Formulas. From This Premise They Arrive At Communism And Sexual Promiscuity; They Were Therefore Exterminated After A Heroic Resistance.

Good Nature Is, Of All Moral Qualities, The One That The World Needs Most, And Good Nature Is The Result Of Ease And Security, Not Of A Life Of Arduous Struggle. Modern Methods Of Production Have Given Us The Possibility Of Ease And Security For All; We Have Chosen, Instead, To Have Overwork For Some And Starvation For The Others. Hitherto We Have Continued To Be As Energetic As We Were Before There Were Machines; In This We Have Been Foolish, But There Is No Reason To Go On Being Foolish For Ever.

He Will See Himself And Life And The World As Truly As Our Human Limitations Will Permit; Realizing The Brevity And Minuteness Of Human Life, He Will Realize Also That In Individual Minds Is Concentrated Whatever Of Value The Known Universe Contains.

At The Age Of Eleven, I Began Euclid, With My Brother As My Tutor. ... I Had Not Imagined That There Was Anything So Delicious In The World. After I Had Learned The Fifth Proposition, My Brother Told Me That It Was Generally Considered Difficult, But I Had Found No Difficulty Whatsoever. This Was The First Time It Had Dawned On Me That I Might Have Some Intelligence.

In The Revolt Against Idealism, The Ambiguities Of The Word Experience Have Been Perceived, With The Result That Realists Have More And More Avoided The Word.

Politics Is Concerned With Herds Rather Than With Individuals, And The Passions Which Are Important In Politics Are, Therefore, Those In Which The Various Members Of A Given Herd Can Feel Alike.

The Power Of Thought, The Vast Regions It Can Master.

Power Of Thought

It Is Likely That America Will Be More Important During The Next Century Or Two, But After That It May Well Be The Turn Of China.

The Tragedy Of The People Of Palestine Is That Their Country Was “given” By A Foreign Power To Another People For The Creation Of A New State. The Result Was That Many Hundreds Of Thousands Of Innocent People Were Made Permanently Homeless. With Every New Conflict Their Numbers Increased. How Much Longer Is The World Willing To Endure This Spectacle Of Wanton Cruelty?

Philosophy Is To Be Studied, Not For The Sake Of Any Definite Answers To Its Questions, Since No Definite Answers Can, As A Rule, Be Known To Be True, But Rather For The Sake Of The Questions Themselves; Because These Questions Enlarge Our Conception Of What Is Possible, Enrich Our Intellectual Imagination And Diminish The Dogmatic Assurance Which Closes The Mind Against Speculation; But Above All Because, Through The Greatness Of The Universe Which Philosophy Contemplates, The Mind Is Also Rendered Great, And Becomes Capable Of That Union With The Universe Which Constitutes Its Highest Good.

The Essence Of Life Is Doing Things For Their Own Sakes.

Science, By Itself, Cannot Supply Us With An Ethic. It Can Show Us How To Achieve A Given End, And It May Show Us That Some Ends Cannot Be Achieved.

When The Intensity Of Emotional Conviction Subsides, A Man Who Is In The Habit Of Reasoning Will Search For Logical Grounds In Favour Of The Belief Which He Finds In Himself.

The Infliction Of Cruelty With A Good Conscience Is A Delight To Moralists - That Is Why They Invented Hell.

My Conclusion Is That There Is No Reason To Believe Any Of The Dogmas Of Traditional Theology And, Further, That There Is No Reason To Wish That They Were True. Man, In So Far As He Is Not Subject To Natural Forces, Is Free To Work Out His Own Destiny. The Responsibility Is His, And So Is The Opportunity.

I Did Not, However, Commit Suicide, Because I Wished To Know More Of Mathematics.

There Is Something Feeble And A Little Contemptible About A Man Who Cannot Face The Perils Of Life Without The Help Of Comfortable Myths.

One Of The Most Interesting And Harmful Delusions To Which Men And Nations Can Be Subjected Is That Of Imagining Themselves Special Instruments Of The Divine Will.

The World That I Should Wish To See Would Be One Freed From The Virulence Of Group Hostilities And Capable Of Realizing That Happiness For All Is To Be Derived Rather From Co-operation Than From Strife. I Should Wish To See A World In Which Education Aimed At Mental Freedom Rather Than Imprisoning The Minds Of The Young In Rigid Armor Of Dogma Calculated To Protect Them Through Life Against The Shafts Of Impartial Evidence.

The Life Of Man Is A Long March Through The Night, Surrounded By Invisible Foes, Tortured By Weariness And Pain, Towards A Goal That Few Can Hope To Reach, And Where None May Tarry Long.

If An Opinion Contrary To Your Own Makes You Angry, That Is A Sign That You Are Subsciously Aware Of Having No Good Reason For Thinking As You Do. [...] The Most Savage Controversies Are Those About Matters As To Which There Is No Good Evidence Either Way. Persecution Is Used In Theology, Not In Arithmetic, Because In Arithmetic There Is Knowledge, But In Theology There Is Only Opinion. So Whenever You Find Yourself Getting Angry About A Difference Of Opinion, Be On Your Guard; You Will Probably Find, On Examination, That Your Belief Is Going Beyond What The Evidence Warrants.

Finding Yourself

You May Reasonably Expect A Man To Walk A Tightrope Safely For Ten Minutes; It Would Be Unreasonable To Do So Without Accident For Two Hundred Years.

Broadly Speaking, We Are In The Middle Of A Race Between Human Skill As A Means And Human Folly As An End.

Many A Man Will Have The Courage To Die Gallantly, But Will Not Have The Courage To Say, Or Even To Think, That The Cause For Which He Is Asked To Die Is An Unworthy One.

The . . . Increase In The Power Of Officials Is A Constant Source Of Irritation To Everybody Else.

... Mathematical Knowledge ... Is, In Fact, Merely Verbal Knowledge. "3" Means "2+1", And "4" Means "3+1". Hence It Follows (though The Proof Is Long) That "4" Means The Same As "2+2". Thus Mathematical Knowledge Ceases To Be Mysterious.

This Has Been My Life. I Have Found It Worth Living, And Would Gladly Live It Again If The Second Chance Were Offered Me.

But It Is Just This Characteristic Of Simplicity In The Laws Of Nature Hitherto Discovered Which It Would Be Fallacious To Generalize, For It Is Obvious That Simplicity Has Been A Part Cause Of Their Discovery, And Can, Therefore, Give No Ground For The Supposition That Other Undiscovered Laws Are Equally Simple.

I Say Quite Deliberately That The Christian Religion, As Organized In Its Churches, Has Been And Still Is The Principal Enemy Of Moral Progress In The World.

Ignore Fact And Reason, Live Entirely In The World Of Your Own Fantastic And Myth-producing Passions; Do This Whole-heartedly And With Conviction, And You Will Become One Of The Prophets Of Your Age.

The Resistance To A New Idea Increases By The Square Of Its Importance.

The Morality Of Work Is The Morality Of Slaves, And The Modern World Has No Need Of Slavery.

The Best Practical Advice I Can Give To The Present Generation Is To Practice The Virtue Which The Christians Call Love.

To Conquer Fear Is The Beginning Of Wisdom.

Altogether It Will Be Found That A Quiet Life Is Characteristic Of Great Men, And That Their Pleasures Have Not Been Of The Sort That Would Look Exciting To The Outward Eye.

The Modern Man Thinks That Everything Ought To Be Done For The Sake Of Something Else, And Never For Its Own Sake.

Gradually, ... The Aspect Of Science As Knowledge Is Being Thrust Into The Background By The Aspect Of Science As The Power Of Manipulating Nature. It Is Because Science Gives Us The Power Of Manipulating Nature That It Has More Social Importance Than Art. Science As The Pursuit Of Truth Is The Equal, But Not The Superior, Of Art. Science As A Technique, Though It May Have Little Intrinsic Value, Has A Practical Importance To Which Art Cannot Aspire.

We Must Be Sceptical Even Of Our Scepticism.

Organized People Are Just Too Lazy To Look For Things

Zeno Was Concerned With Three Problems... These Are The Problem Of The Infinitesimal, The Infinite, And Continuity.

Liberty Is The Right To Do What I Like; Licence, The Right To Do What You Like.

The More We Realize Our Minuteness And Our Impotence In The Face Of Cosmic Forces, The More Amazing Becomes What Human Beings Have Achieved.

We May Define "faith" As The Firm Belief In Something For Which There Is No Evidence. Where There Is Evidence, No One Speaks Of "faith." We Do Not Speak Of Faith That Two And Two Are Four Or That The Earth Is Round. We Only Speak Of Faith When We Wish To Substitute Emotion For Evidence. The Substitution Of Emotion For Evidence Is Apt To Lead To Strife, Since Different Groups, Substitute Different Emotions.

The Fact That An Opinion Has Been Widely Held Is No Evidence Whatever That It Is Not Utterly Absurd; Indeed In View Of The Silliness Of The Majority Of Mankind, A Widely Spread Belief Is More Likely To Be Foolish Than Sensible.

Orthodoxy Is The Grave Of Intelligence, No Matter What Orthodoxy It May Be.

Collective Fear Stimulates Herd Instinct, And Tends To Produce Ferocity Toward Those Who Are Not Regarded As Members Of The Herd.

Love Is A Little Haven Of Refuge From The World.

The Pursuit Of Knowledge Is, I Think, Mainly Actuated By Love Of Power. And So Are All Advances In Scientific Technique.

Tobacco . . . Is Not Prohibited In The Scriptures, Though, As Samuel Butler Points Out, St. Paul Would No Doubt Have Denounced It If He Had Known Of It.

Science Is No Substitute For Virtue; The Heart Is As Necessary For A Good Life As The Head.

To Understand A Name You Must Be Acquainted With The Particular Of Which It Is A Name.

When One Admits That Nothing Is Certain One Must, I Think, Also Admit That Some Things Are Much More Nearly Certain Than Others.

Education, And The Life Of The Mind Generally, Is A Matter In Which Individual Initiative Is The Chief Thing Needed; The Function Of The State Should Begin And End With Insistence On Some Kind Of Education, And, If Possible, A Kind Which Promotes Mental Individualism, Not A Kind Which Happens To Conform To The Prejudices Of Government Officials.

A Life Which Goes Excessively Against Natural Impulse Is... Likely To Involve Effects Of Strain That May Be Quite As Bad As Indulgence In Forbidden Impulses Would Have Been. People Who Live A Life Which Is Unnatural Beyond A Point Are Likely To Be Filled With Envy, Malice And Uncharitableness.

Mathematics Takes Us Into The Region Of Absolute Necessity, To Which Not Only The Actual Word, But Every Possible Word, Must Conform.

Among Human Beings, The Subjection Of Women Is Much More Complete At A Certain Level Of Civilization Than It Is Among Savages. And The Subjection Is Always Reinforced By Morality.

Broadly Speaking, Protestants Like To Be Good And Have Invented Theology In Order To Keep Themselves So, Whereas Catholics Like To Be Bad And Have Invented Theology In Order To Keep Their Neighbors Good. Hence, The Social Character Of Catholicism And The Individual Character Of Protestantism.

To Fear Love Is To Fear Life.

I Read Zuleika Dobson With Pleasure. It Represents The Oxford That The Two World Wars Have Destroyed With A Charm That Is Not Likely To Be Reproduced Anywhere In The World For The Next Thousand Years.

Philosophy, Though Unable To Tell Us With Certainty What Is The True Answer To The Doubts Which It Raises, Is Able To Suggest Many Possibilities Which Enlarge Our Thoughts And Free Them From The Tyranny Of Custom.

Education Ought To Foster The Wish For Truth, Not The Conviction That Some Particular Creed Is The Truth.

Calculating Machines Do Sums Better Than Even The Cleverest People… As Arithmetic Has Grown Easier, It Has Come To Be Less Respected.

There's A Bible On That Shelf There. But I Keep It Next To Voltaire - Poison And Antidote.

In The Great Depression, Things Could Only Be Set Right By Causing The Idle Plant To Work Again . . . Roosevelt . . . Spent Billions Of Public Money And Created A Huge Public Debt, But By So Doing He Revived Production And Brought His Country Out Of The Depression. Businessmen, Who In Spite Of Such A Sharp Lesson Continued To Believe In Old-fashioned Economics, Were Infinitely Shocked, And Although Roosevelt Saved Them From Ruin, They Continued To Curse Him And To Speak Of Him As 'the Madman In The White House.' . . . [it's One More] Striking Example Of Inability To Learn From Experience.

A Word Is Used "correctly" When The Average Hearer Will Be Affected By It In The Way Intended. This Is A Psychological, Not A Literary, Definition Of "correctness". The Literary Definition Would Substitute, For The Average Hearer, A Person Of High Education Living A Long Time Ago; The Purpose Of This Definition Is To Make It Difficult To Speak Or Write Correctly.

It Is For This Reason That Rationality Is Of Supreme Importance To The Well-being Of The Human Species...even More, In Those Less Fortunate Times In Which It Is Despised And Rejected As The Vain Dream Of Men Who Lack The Virility To Kill Where They Cannot Agree.

America Remained A Land Of Promise For Lovers Of Freedom. Even Byron, At A Moment When He Was Disgusted With Napoleon For Not Committing Suicide, Wrote An Eloquent Stanza In Praise Of Washington.

Science Seems To Be At War With Itself.... Naive Realism Leads To Physics, And Physics, If True, Shows Naive Realism To Be False. Therefore Naive Realism, If True, Is False; Therefore It Is False.

I Have Found, For Example, That If I Have To Write Upon Sum Rather Difficult Topic, The Best Plan Is To Think About It With Very Great Intensity-the Greatest Intensity Of Which I Am Capable-for A Few Hours Or Days, And At The End Of That Time Give Orders, So To Speak (to My Subconscious Mind) That The Work Is To Proceed Underground. After Some Months I Return Consciously To The Topic And Find That The Work Has Been Done.

Righteousness Cannot Be Born Until Self-righteousness Is Dead.

Man Is A Rational Animal—so At Least I Have Been Told. … Aristotle, So Far As I Know, Was The First Man To Proclaim Explicitly That Man Is A Rational Animal. His Reason For This View Was … That Some People Can Do Sums. … It Is In Virtue Of The Intellect That Man Is A Rational Animal. The Intellect Is Shown In Various Ways, But Most Emphatically By Mastery Of Arithmetic. The Greek System Of Numerals Was Very Bad, So That The Multiplication Table Was Quite Difficult, And Complicated Calculations Could Only Be Made By Very Clever People.

By Self-interest, Man Has Become Gregarious, But In Instinct He Has Remained To A Great Extent Solitary; Hence The Need Of Religion And Morality To Reinforce Self-interest.

Envy ... Is One Form Of A Vice, Partly Moral, Partly Intellectual, Which Consists In Seeing Things Never In Themselves But Only In Their Relations.

If An Opinion Contrary To Your Own Makes You Angry, That Is A Sign That You Are Subconsciously Aware Of Having No Good Reason For Thinking As You Do.

Dread Of Disaster Makes Everybody Act In The Very Way That Increases The Disaster. Psychologically The Situation Is Analogous To That Of People Trampled To Death When There Is A Panic In A Theatre Caused By A Cry Of `fire!'.

A Man Is Rational In Proportion As His Intelligence Informs And Controls His Desires.

Only Mathematics And Mathematical Logic Can Say As Little As The Physicist Means To Say.

Mathematical Logic

Science Has Made Unrestricted National Sovereignty Incompatible With Human Survival. The Only Possibilities Are Now World Government Or Death.

World Government

All Who Are Not Lunatics Are Agreed About Certain Things. That It Is Better To Be Alive Than Dead, Better To Be Adequately Fed Than Starved, Better To Be Free Than A Slave. Many People Desire Those Things Only For Themselves And Their Friends; They Are Quite Content That Their Enemies Should Suffer. These People Can Only Be Refuted By Science: Humankind Has Become So Much One Family That We Cannot Ensure Our Own Prosperity Except By Ensuring That Of Everyone Else. If You Wish To Be Happy Yourself, You Must Resign Yourself To Seeing Others Also Happy.

The First Effect Of Emancipation From The Church Was Not To Make Men Think Rationally, But To Open Their Minds To Every Sort Of Antique Nonsense

When One Admits That Nothing Is Certain One Must, I Think, Also Admit That Some Things Are Much More Nearly Certain Than Others. It Is Much More Nearly Certain That We Are Assembled Here Tonight Than It Is That This Or That Political Party Is In The Right. Certainly There Are Degrees Of Certainty, And One Should Be Very Careful To Emphasize That Fact, Because Otherwise One Is Landed In An Utter Skepticism, And Complete Skepticism Would, Of Course, Be Totally Barren And Completely Useless.

Whenever You Find Yourself Getting Angry About A Difference Of Opinion, Be On Your Guard; You Will Probably Find, On Examination, That Your Belief Is Going Beyond What The Evidence Warrants.

Finding Yourself

There Is... In Our Day, A Powerful Antidote To Nonsense, Which Hardly Existed In Earlier Times - I Mean Science. Science Cannot Be Ignored Or Rejected, Because It Is Bound Up With Modern Technique; It Is Essential Alike To Prosperity In Peace And To Victory In War. That Is, Perhaps From An Intellectual Point Of View, The Most Hopeful Feature Of Our Age, And The One Which Makes It Most Likely That We Shall Escape Complete Submersion In Some New Or Old Superstition.

There Is No Need To Worry About Mere Size. We Do Not Necessarily Respect A Fat Man More Than A Thin Man. Sir Isaac Newton Was Very Much Smaller Than A Hippopotamus, But We Do Not On That Account Value Him Less.

In Action, In Desire, We Must Submit Perpetually To The Tyranny Of Outside Forces; But In Thought, In Aspiration, We Are Free, Free From Our Fellowmen, Free From The Petty Planet On Which Our Bodies Impotently Crawl, Free Even, While We Live, From The Tyranny Of Death.

Why Repeat The Old Errors, If There Are So Many New Errors To Commit?

I Think People Who Are Unhappy Are Always Proud Of Being So, And Therefore Do Not Like To Be Told That There Is Nothing Grand About Their Unhappiness. A Man Who Is Melancholy Because Lack Of Exercise Has Upset His Liver Always Believes That It Is The Loss Of God, Or The Menace Of Bolshevism, Or Some Such Dignified Cause That Makes Him Sad. When You Tell People That Happiness Is A Simple Matter, They Get Annoyed With You.

The Immense Majority Of Intellectually Eminent Men Disbelieve In The Christian Religion, But They Conceal The Fact In Public, Because They Are Afraid Of Losing Their Incomes.

I Dislike Communism Because It Is Undemocratic, And Capitalism Because It Favors Exploitation.

A Drop Of Water Is Not Immortal; It Can Be Resolved Into Oxygen And Hydrogen. If, Therefore, A Drop Of Water Were To Maintain That It Had A Quality Of Aqueousness Which Would Survive Its Dissolution We Should Be Inclined To Be Skeptical. In Like Manner We Know That The Brain Is Not Immortal.

If I Were Granted Omnipotence, And Millions Of Years To Experiment In, I Should Not Think Man Much To Boast Of As The Final Result Of All My Efforts.

Uncertainty In The Pressure Of Vivid Hopes And Fears Is Painful, But Must Be Endured If We Wish To Live Without The Support Of Comforting Fairy Tales.

It Will Be Found, As Men Grow More Tolerant In Their Instincts, That Many Uniformities Now Insisted Upon Are Useless And Even Harmful.

I Consider The Official Catholic Attitude On Divorce, Birth Control, And Censorship Exceedingly Dangerous To Mankind.

It Is Not Known Why The Lord Made The Human Body As He Did, Since One Might Suppose That Omnipotence Could Have Made It Such As Would Not Have Shocked The Nice People.

Of All Forms Of Caution, Caution In Love Is Perhaps The Most Fatal To True Happiness.

When Anaesthetics Were Invented They Were Thought To Be Wicked As Being An Attempt To Thwart God's Will. Insanity Was Thought To Be Due To Diabolic Possession, And It Was Believed That Demons Inhabiting A Madman Could Be Driven Out By Inflicting Pain Upon Him, And So Making Them Uncomfortable. In Pursuit Of This Opinion, Lunatics Were Treated For Years On End With Systematic And Conscientious Brutality.

Protestants, From The First, Have Been Distinguished From Their Opponents By What They Do Not Believe; To Throw Over One More Dogma Is, Therefore, Merely To Carry The Movement One Stage Further. Moral Fervor Is The Essence Of The Matter.

It Is Essential To Happiness That Our Way Of Living Should Spring From Our Own Deep Impulses And Not From The Accidental Tastes And Desires Of Those Who Happen To Be Our Neighbors, Or Even Our Relations.

Although It Is A Gloomy View To Suppose That Life Will Die Out, Sometimes When I Contemplate The Things That People Do With Their Lives I Think It Is Almost A Consolation

As Soon As We Abandon Our Own Reason, And Are Content To Rely Upon Authority, There Is No End To Our Trouble. . . . No Catholic, For Instance, Takes Seriously The Text Which Says That A Bishop Should Be The Husband Of One Wife.

Science, In Its Ultimate Ideal, Consists Of A Set Of Propositions Arranged In A Hierarchy, The Lowest Level Of The Hierarchy Being Concerned With Particular Facts, And The Highest With Some General Law, Governing Everything In The Universe. The Various Levels In The Hierarchy Have A Two-fold Logical Connection, Travelling One Up, One Down; The Upward Connection Proceeds By Induction, The Downward By Deduction.

Ethics Is In Origin The Art Of Recommending To Others The Sacrifices Required For Cooperation With Oneself.

I Do Not Believe That I Am Now Dreaming, But I Cannot Prove That I Am Not. I Am, However, Quite Certain That I Am Having Certain Experiences, Whether They Be Those Of A Dream Or Those Of Waking Life.

The Philosophies That Have Been Inspired By Scientific Technique Are Power Philosophies, And Tend To Regard Everything Non-human As Mere Raw Material. Ends Are No Longer Considered; Only The Skillfulness Of The Process Is Valued. This Also Is A Form Of Madness. It Is, In Our Day, The Most Dangerous Form, And The One Against Which A Sane Philosophy Should Provide An Antidote

Science, By Itself, Cannot Supply Us With An Ethic. It Can Show Us How To Achieve A Given End, And It May Show Us That Some Ends Cannot Be Achieved. But Among Ends That Can Be Achieved Our Choice Must Be Decided By Other Than Purely Scientific Considerations. If A Man Were To Say, "i Hate The Human Race, And I Think It Would Be A Good Thing If It Were Exterminated," We Could Say, "well, My Dear Sir, Let Us Begin The Process With You." But This Is Hardly Argument, And No Amount Of Science Could Prove Such A Man Mistaken.

It Can Be Shown That A Mathematical Web Of Some Kind Can Be Woven About Any Universe Containing Several Objects. The Fact That Our Universe Lends Itself To Mathematical Treatment Is Not A Fact Of Any Great Philosophical Significance.

The Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time.

Next To Enjoying Ourselves, The Next Greatest Pleasure Consists In Preventing Others From Enjoying Themselves, Or, More Generally, In The Acquisition Of Power.

What Is Best In Mathematics Deserves Not Merely To Be Learnt As A Task, But To Assimilated As A Part Of Daily Thought, And Brought Again And Again Before The Mind With Ever-renewed Encouragement.

I Do Not Believe That I Am Now Dreaming, But I Cannot Prove That I Am Not.

Patience And Boredom Are Closely Related. Boredom, A Certain Kind Of Boredom, Is Really Impatience. You Don't Like The Way Things Are, They Aren't Interesting Enough For You, So You Deccide- And Boredom Is A Decision-that You Are Bored.

A European Who Goes To New York And Chicago Sees The Future... When He Goes To Asia He Sees The Past.

The World In Which We Live Can Be Understood As A Result Of Muddle And Accident; But If It Is The Outcome Of Deliberate Purpose, The Purpose Must Have Been That Of A Fiend. For My Part, I Find Accident A Less Painful And More Plausible Hypothesis.

The Fundamental Principle In The Analysis Of Propositions Containing Descriptions Is This: Every Proposition Which We Can Understand Must Be Composed Wholly Of Constituents With Which We Are Acquainted.

Laughter Is The Most Inexpensive And Most Effective Wonder Drug. Laughter Is A Universal Medicine.

It Would Have Been Very Much Better For The World If Britain Had Remained Neutral And The Germans Had Won A Quick Victory. We Should Not Have Had Either The Nazis Or The Communists If That Had Happened.

Men Who Are Unhappy, Like Men Who Sleep Badly, Are Always Proud Of The Fact.

Protagoras Did Not Know If The Gods Exist, But He Held In Any Case They Ought To Be Worshiped. Philosophy, According To Him, Had Nothing Edifying To Teach, And For The Survival Of Morals We Must Rely Upon The Thoughtlessness Of The Majority And Their Willingness To Believe What They Had Been Taught.

Right Discipline Consists, Not In External Compulsion, But In The Habits Of Mind Which Lead Spontaneously To Desirable Rather Than Undesirable Activities.

Mankind Is Divided Into Two Classes: Those Who, Being Artificial, Praise Nature, And Those Who, Being Natural, Praise Art.

My Own View On Religion Is That Of Lucretius. I Regard It As A Disease Born Of Fear And As A Source Of Untold Misery To The Human Race.

An Individual Human Existence Should Be Like A River

Neither Acquiescence In Skepticism Nor Acquiescence In Dogma Is What Education Should Produce.

Affection Cannot Be Created; It Can Only Be Liberated.

Without Effort And Change, Human Life Cannot Remain Good. It Is Not A Finished Utopia That We Ought To Desire, But A World Where Imagination And Hope Are Alive And Active.

Can A Society In Which Thought And Technique Are Scientific Persist For A Long Period, As, For Example, Ancient Egypt Persisted, Or Does It Necessarily Contain Within Itself Forces Which Must Bring Either Decay Or Explosion?

The Law Of Causality, I Believe, Like Much That Passes Muster Among Philosophers, Is A Relic Of A Bygone Age, Surviving, Like The Monarchy, Only Because It Is Erroneously Supposed To Do No Harm.

The Road To Happiness And Prosperity Lies In An Organized Diminution Of Work.

It Appeared That After First Contemplating A Book On Some Subject, And After Giving Serious Preliminary Attention To It, I Needed A Period Of Subconscious Incubation Which Could Not Be Hurried And Was If Anything Impeded By Deliberate Thinking.... Having, By A Time Of Very Intense Concentration, Planted The Problem In My Subconsciousness, It Would Germinate Underground Until, Suddenly, The Solution Emerged With A Blinding Clarity, So That It Only Remained To Write Down What Happened As If In A Revelation.

Opinions Which Justify Cruelty Are Inspired By Cruel Impulses.

I Believe In Using Words, Not Fists. I Believe In My Outrage Knowing People Are Living In Boxes On The Street. I Believe In Honesty. I Believe In A Good Time. I Believe In Good Food. I Believe In Sex.

We May Often Do As We Please - But We Cannot Please As We Please.

Christ Said "thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself" And When Asked "who Is Thy Neighbour? Went On To The Parable Of The Good Samaritan. If You Wish To Understand This Parable As It Was Understood By His Hearers, You Should Substitute "germans And Japanese" For Samaritan. I Fear My Modern Day Christians Would Resent Such A Substitution, Because It Would Compel Them To Realize How Far They Have Departed From The Teachings Of The Founder Of Their Religion.

The Desire To Understand The World And The Desire To Reform It Are The Two Great Engines Of Progress, Without Which Human Society Would Stand Still Or Retrogress.

With Civilized Men..., It Is, I Think, Chiefly Love Of Excitement Which Makes The Populace Applaud When War Breaks Out; The Emotion Is Exactly The Same As At A Football Match, Although The Results Are Sometimes Somewhat More Serious.

The Taboo Against Nakedness Is An Obstacle To A Decent Attitude On The Subject Of Sex.

The Skill Of The Politician Consists In Guessing What People Can Be Brought To Think Advantageous To Themselves; The Skill Of The Expert Consists In Calculating What Really Is Advantageous, Provided People Can Be Brought To Think So.

The Pure Mathematician, Like The Musician, Is A Free Creator Of His World Of Ordered Beauty.

Measures Of Sterilization Should, In My Opinion, Be Very Definitely Confined To Persons Who Are Mentally Defective

My Sad Conviction Is That People Can Only Agree About What They're Not Really Interested In.

There Is Something Feeble, And A Little Contemptible, About A Man Who Cannot Face The Perils Of Life Without The Help Of Comfortable Myths. Almost Inevitably Some Part Of Him Is Aware That They Are Myths And That He Believes Them Only Because They Are Comforting. But He Dare Not Face This Thought, And He Therefore Cannot Carry His Own Reflection To Any Logical Conclusion.

I Am As Drunk As A Lord, But Then, I Am One, So What Does It Matter ?

The Supreme Maxim In Scientific Philosophising Is This: Wherever Possible, Logical Constructions Are To Be Substituted For Inferred Entities.

Vanity Is A Motive Of Immense Potency.

The Fact That All Mathematics Is Symbolic Logic Is One Of The Greatest Discoveries Of Our Age; And When This Fact Has Been Established, The Remainder Of The Principles Of Mathematics Consists Of The Analysis Of Symbolic Logic Itself.

Mathematical Logic

Citizens As Conceived By Governments Are Persons Who Admire The Status Quo And Are Prepared To Exert Themselves For Its Preservation. Oddly Enough, While All Governments Aim At Producing Men Of This Type To The Exclusion Of All Other Types, Their Heroes In The Past Are Of Exactly The Sort That They Aim At Preventing In The Present. Americans Admire George Washington And Jefferson, But Imprison Those Who Share Their Political Opinions.

Philosophy Is An Unusually Ingenious Attempt To Think Fallaciously.

To Fear Love Is To Fear Life, And Those Who Fear Life Are Already Three Parts Dead.

The Eugenic Society . . . Is Perpetually Bewailing The Fact That Wage-earners Breed Faster Than Middle-class People.

The Christian View That All Intercourse Outside Marriage Is Immoral Was, As We See In The Above Passages From St. Paul, Based Upon The View That All Sexual Intercourse, Even Within Marriage, Is Regrettable. A View Of This Sort, Which Goes Against Biological Facts, Can Only Be Regarded By Sane People As A Morbid Aberration. The Fact That It Is Embedded In Christian Ethics Has Made Christianity Throughout Its Whole History A Force Tending Towards Mental Disorders And Unwholesome Views Of Life.

Science Is What We Know, And Philosophy Is What We Don't Know.

The Coward Wretch Whose Hand And Heart Can Bear To Torture Aught Below, Is Ever First To Quail And Start From The Slightest Pain Or Equal Foe.

Neither A Man Nor A Crowd Nor A Nation Can Be Trusted To Act Humanely Or To Think Sanely Under The Influence Of A Great Fear.

There Was A Law In Connecticut - I Believe It Is Still Formally Unrepealed - Making It Illegal For A Man To Kiss His Wife On Sunday.

The Human Heart As Modern Civilization Has Made It Is More Prone To Hatred Than To Friendship. And It Is Prone To Hatred Because It Is Dissatisfied.

It Is Entirely Clear That There Is Only One Way In Which Great Wars Can Be Permanently Prevented, And That Is The Establishment Of An International Government With A Monopoly Of Serious Armed Force.

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